The quantum sensing landscape has been revolutionized by advanced technologies like superconducting circuits and qubit-based systems which have furthered the ability to probe and understand fundamental properties of quantum matter. Here, we propose an integrated photonic device where a transmon qubit capacitively couples to a microwave cross-resonator, and the setup is employed for sensing of time reversal broken order in materials. In this sensing scheme, the transmon qubit plays a dual role as both a control element and a passive detector, while the photonic cross-resonator serves as the host for the sample, enabling a contact-free spectroscopic method suitable for studying materials where reliable electrical contacts are challenging to obtain, e.g., in van der Waal 2D heterostructures. We show that by tuning the coupling strength and phase between the transmon and the cross-resonator, the system allows selective control over the interaction dynamics and leads to a highly sensitive detection method that can be compactly understood in terms of evolution of excited state population and quantum metric of the resonator-transmon hybrid state. This architecture has the potential to host a wide range of quantum phenomena that can be precisely encoded in the dynamics of the transmon qubit and, in this way, potentially allows access to elusive aspects of correlated materials.
Petrides et al. (Tue,) studied this question.