Steven Girvin – Yale University
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Zoom opens: 10:30AM EDT
Seminar begins: 10:45AM EDT
Quantum Signal Processing:
Making Schrödinger Cats and Other Exotic States of Microwave Photons
The Schrödinger Cat idea was an early thought experiment intended to point out the weirdness of quantum mechanics. It is a paradigmatic example of the quantum principles of superposition and entanglement. With the vast experimental progress in the last two decades, we can now routinely carry out this experiment in the laboratory. In this pedagogical talk, I will present a ‘quantum signal processing’ recipe for how to create a Schrödinger Cat in a system consisting of a superconducting microwave resonator (a harmonic oscillator) and a superconducting qubit (a two-level artificial atom). Extensions of this recipe now allow us to create even more exotic states of microwaves that can be used as quantum error correction codes.