Pulse-qubit interaction in a superconducting circuit under frictively dissipative environment
Microwave pulses are used ubiquitously to control and measure qubits fabricated on superconducting circuits. Due to continual environmental coupling, the qubits undergo decoherence both when it is free and during its interaction with the microwave pulse. As quantum logic gates are executed through pulse-qubit interaction, we study theoretically the decoherence-induced effects during the interaction, especially the variations of the pulse, under a dissipative environment with linear spectral distribution. We find that a transmissible pulse of finite width adopts an asymmetric multi-hump shape, due to the imbalanced pumping and emitting rates of the qubit during inversion when the environment is present. The pulse shape reduces to a solitonic pulse at vanishing dissipation and a pulse train at strong dissipation. We give detailed analysis of the environmental origin from both the perspectives of envelope and phase of the propagating pulse.