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Photon blockade in a Tavis-Cummings system

Brian Marinelli1,2,*, Alex H. Rubin3,4,*, Victoria A. Norman3,4, Santai Yang1, Ravi Naik1,2, Bethany M. Niedzielski5, David K. Kim5, Rabindra Das5, Mollie Schwartz5 et al.

David I. Santiago1,2, Christopher Spitzer1,2, Irfan Siddiqi1,2, and Marina Radulaski3,†

  • *These authors contributed equally.
  • †Contact author: mradulaski@ucdavis.edu
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Phys. Rev. Applied 24, 044103 – Published 31 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/st87-3cxz

Abstract

We observe blockade of microwave photons in a Tavis-Cummings system comprising a superconducting cavity and up to N=3 transmon qubits. The effect is characterized with photon-number-resolving spectroscopy using an additional dispersively coupled transmon “witness” qubit to directly probe the cavity’s photon-number distribution. We first observe polariton formation with splitting proportional to N, confirming the Tavis-Cummings coupling, and subsequently obtain sub-Poissonian cavity photon statistics when the cavity is driven at polariton frequencies.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 24, 044103– Published 31 October, 2025
  • Received 30 January 2025
  • Revised 1 October 2025
  • Accepted 6 October 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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