Observation of photonic dynamics in dissipative quantum Rabi models

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental realization of a dissipative quantum Rabi model in circuit QED, showing how photonic dissipation influences the system's dynamics and steady states.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental setup for the open quantum Rabi model with controlled dissipation, revealing the impact of photonic loss on quantum dynamics.

Findings

Photon number distributions vary with coupling strength.

Photon number dynamics are altered by dissipation.

System behavior is significantly affected by photonic loss.

Abstract

The quantum Rabi model (QRM), composed of a qubit interacting with a quantized photonic field, is a cornerstone of quantum optics. The QRM with dominant unitary dynamics has been demonstrated in circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED) systems, but an open QRM with a strong photonic dissipation has not been experimentally explored. We here present the first experimental demonstration of such an open system in circuit QED, featuring a controlled competition between the coherent qubit-field interaction and the photonic dissipation. We map out the photon number distributions of the dissipative resonator for different coupling strengths in the steady state. We further observe the variation of the photon number during the system's evolution toward the steady state with fixed control parameters. The results demonstrate that the system's behavior is significantly modified by photonic dissipation.