Quantum amplification of boson-mediated interactions*

Strong and precisely controlled interactions between quantum objects are essential for emerging technologies such as quantum information processing, simulation, and sensing. A well-established paradigm for coupling otherwise weakly interacting quantum objects is to use auxiliary quantum particles, typically bosons, to mediate interactions, for example photon-mediated interactions between atoms or superconducting qubits, and phonon-mediated interactions between trapped ions. General methods for amplifying these interactions through parametric driving of the boson channel have been proposed for a variety of quantum platforms, but an experimental demonstration has yet to be realized. Here we experimentally demonstrate the amplification of a boson-mediated interaction between two trapped-ion qubits by parametrically modulating the confining potential of the trap. The stronger interaction enables a 3.3-fold reduction in the time required to implement an entangling gate between the two qubits. Our method can be applied wherever parametric modulation of the boson channel is possible, enabling its use in a variety of quantum platforms to explore new parameter regimes and for enhanced quantum information processing.