CLEO®/Europe-IQEC 2013: Strongly interacting many body physics with circuit quantum electrodynamics networks

In its infancy circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) has quickly started reproducing fundamental quantum optical experiments, e.g. observation of vacuum rabi oscillations in frequency and time domain, with unprecedented cooperativity. This was possible because of the large coupling of the quasi one-dimensional microwave field of the superconducting transmission line resonators to the macroscopic dipole moment of superconducting qubits. cQED has matured to a discipline of experimental physics capable of performing fundamental quantum information tasks and is currently on the verge of crossing the border between few- to many body physics [1]. This opens up a exciting realm of completely new physical phenomena. Because of the ubiquitous influence of the electromagnetic environment however the number of microwave photons is not conserved which separates cQED systems from other quantum simulators involving atoms, e.g. cold atoms in optical latices. Instead cQED is ideally suited for exploring quantum many-body physics in the driven dissipative regime where the interplay of constantly injecting microwave photons and the unpreventable loss of microwave photons into the electromagnetic environment generates a whole new class of steady- but not equilibrium states. We propose an array of capacitively coupled superconducting resonators each coupled to an superconducting charge qubit and show that this device can be considered as an simulator for Bose Hubbard physics combined with the high flexibility of network topologies unique to cQED systems[2]. We further investigate the driven dissipative dynamics of this device. We refine this approach and calculate the eigenmodes and nonlinearities of a Josephson junction intersected transmission line resonator[3](c.f. fig.1a). This spectrum of eigenmodes shows the ultrastrong coupling of the Josephson junction to the resonator modes and nonlinearities are attainable that are significant on the single photon limit. We now proceed one - tep further and and consider the incorporation of multiple Josephson junctions. A novel transfer matrix technique has to be employed to investigate the eigenmode spectrum of the device.