Bose-Hubbard dynamics of polaritons in a chain of circuit QED cavities

TL;DR

This paper explores the Bose-Hubbard model dynamics of polaritons in a chain of circuit QED cavities, demonstrating a transition from coherent to quantum behavior through experimental feasibility and theoretical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic circuit QED setup for studying strongly interacting polaritons with detailed analysis of their driven dissipative dynamics.

Findings

Observation of a transition from coherent to quantum field behavior

Calculation of stationary polariton density and correlations

Feasibility of experimental probing of polariton chains

Abstract

We investigate a chain of superconducting stripline resonators, each interacting with a transmon qubit, that are capacitively coupled in a row. We show that the dynamics of this system can be described by a Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with attractive interactions for polaritons, superpositions of photons and qubit excitations. This setup we envisage constitutes one of the first platforms where all technological components that are needed to experimentally study chains of strongly interacting polaritons have already been realized. By driving the first stripline resonator with a microwave source and detecting the output field of the last stripline resonator one can spectroscopically probe properties of the system in the driven dissipative regime. We calculate the stationary polariton density and density-density correlations $g^{(2)}$ for the last cavity which can be measured via the output field. Our results display a transition from a coherent to a quantum field as the ratio of on site interactions to driving strength is increased.