Circuit QED: cross-Kerr effect induced by a superconducting qutrit without classical pulses

The realization of cross-Kerr nonlinearity is an important task for many applications in quantum information processing. In this work, we propose a method for realizing cross-Kerr nonlinearity interaction between two superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators coupled by a three-level superconducting flux qutrit (coupler). Because the resonator photons are virtually excited and the coupler is unexcited for the entire process, the effect of resonator decay and the coupler decoherence are greatly minimized. More importantly, compared with the previous proposals, our proposal does not require classical pulses. Furthermore, due to use of only a three-level qutrit, the experimental setup is much simplified when compared with previous proposals requiring a four-level artificial atomic systems. In addition, we implement a two-resonator qubits controlled-phase gate and generate a two-resonator entangled coherent state. Numerical simulation shows that the high-fidelity implementation of the phase gate and creation of the entangled coherent state are feasible with current circuit QED technology.