Superconducting qubits: quantum mechanics in electric circuits

Yasunobu Nakamura

It's a great fun to handle an artificially made quantum system in electric circuits and play with quantum mechanics. Superconducting qubits offer us such possibilities and have been widely studied since its first demonstration in 1999. The first part of this lecture will be an introduction to the qubits and their basic properties. The second part will be devoted to discussions on several recent topics including analysis of decoherence, tunable coupling between qubits, and quantum optical phenomena in a qubit+resonator system.