Cats, Rotating Waves and Photons: An Excursion into Light-Matter Interaction

Abstract

This thesis hopes to achieve two modest goals. The primary goal is to formulate a practical theory for generating cat states by employing a resonant or detuned strong drive on a qubit coupled to a resonator. An incidental outcome of this approach is the ability to encode a qubit state within a resonator state using cat states. The secondary goal is to showcase the robustness of this theory in the face of practical implementation challenges, including decoherence and the existence of more than two levels. In this pursuit, we extend the theory to include a driven qutrit-resonator system. The theory is aimed at a circuit QED implementation using a transmon or charge qubit.