Magnon squeezing in the quantum regime
Squeezed states, crucial for quantum metrology and emerging quantum technologies, have been demonstrated in various platforms, but quantum squeezing of magnons in macroscopic spin systems remains elusive. Here we report the experimental observation of quantum-level magnon squeezing in a millimeter-scale yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere. By engineering a strong dispersive magnon-superconducting qubit coupling via a microwave cavity, we implement a significant self-Kerr nonlinearity to generate squeezed magnon states with their mean magnon number less than one. Harnessing a magnon-assisted Raman process, we perform Wigner tomography, revealing quadrature variances of ~0.8 (~1.0 dB squeezing) relative to the vacuum. These results lay the groundwork for quantum nonlinear magnonics and promise potential applications in quantum metrology.
Authors
- Zhen Chen
- Franco Nori (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3682-7432)
- Yuan-Chao Weng
- Xu-Ke Gu
- Jie Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0199-1606)
- Shiyao Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9051-1149)
- X. Hu
- Li-Zhou Tan
- Da Xu
- J. Q. You
- Hai-Feng Yu
Institutions
- University of Michigan (US)
- Zhejiang Lab (CN)
- Computing Center (RU)
- Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (CN)
- University at Buffalo, State University of New York (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-02-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69312-4
- Primary Topic
- Mechanical and Optical Resonators
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology
- Moonshot Research and Development Program