Strong Coupling of a Single Photon to a Magnetic Vortex

Strong light-matter coupling means that cavity photons and other types of matter excitations are coherently exchanged. It is used to couple different qubits (matter) via a quantum bus (photons) or to communicate different types of excitations, e.g., transducing light into phonons or magnons. A, so far, unexplored interface is the coupling between light and topologically protected particle-like excitations as magnetic domain walls, skyrmions, or vortices. Here, we show theoretically that a single photon living in a super-conducting cavity can be strongly coupled to the gyrotropic mode of a magnetic vortex in a nanodisc. We combine numerical and analytical calculations for a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator and different realizations of the nanodisc (materials and sizes). We show that, for enhancing the coupling, constrictions fabricated in the resonator are crucial, allowing to reach strong coupling in CoFe discs of radius 200-400 nm having resonance frequencies of a few GHz. The strong coupling regime permits coherently exchanging a single photon and quanta of vortex gyration. Thus, our calculations show that the device proposed here serves as a transducer between photons and gyrating vortices, opening the way to complement superconducting qubits with topologically protected spin-excitations such as vortices or skyrmions. We finish by discussing potential applications in quantum data processing based on the exploitation of the vortex as a short-wavelength magnon emitter.