Stimulating uncertainty: Amplifying the quantum vacuum with superconducting circuits

TL;DR

This paper explores how superconducting circuits can be used to amplify quantum vacuum fluctuations, demonstrating mechanisms to generate photons from the vacuum and connecting these to quantum optics techniques.

Contribution

It details multiple mechanisms for vacuum photon generation in superconducting circuits and discusses their potential realization and engineering.

Findings

Superconducting circuits can generate photons from the quantum vacuum.

Various amplification mechanisms are interconnected and engineerable.

Potential to verify analogue Hawking radiation in superconducting systems.

Abstract

The ability to generate particles from the quantum vacuum is one of the most profound consequences of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Although the significance of vacuum fluctuations can be seen throughout physics, the experimental realization of vacuum amplification effects has until now been limited to a few cases. Superconducting circuit devices, driven by the goal to achieve a viable quantum computer, have been used in the experimental demonstration of the dynamical Casimir effect, and may soon be able to realize the elusive verification of analogue Hawking radiation. This article describes several mechanisms for generating photons from the quantum vacuum and emphasizes their connection to the well-known parametric amplifier from quantum optics. Discussed in detail is the possible realization of each mechanism, or its analogue, in superconducting circuit systems. The ability to selectively engineer these circuit devices highlights the relationship between the various amplification mechanisms.