Tunable coupling engineering between superconducting resonators: from sidebands to effective gauge fields

In this work we show that a tunable coupling between microwave resonators can be engineered by means of simple Josephson junctions circuits, such as dc- and rf-SQUIDs. We show that by controlling the time dependence of the coupling it is possible to switch on and off and modulate the cross-talk, boost the interaction towards the ultrastrong regime, as well as to engineer red and blue sideband couplings, nonlinear photon hopping and classical gauge fields. We discuss how these dynamically tunable superconducting circuits enable key applications in the fields of all optical quantum computing, continuous variable quantum information and quantum simulation – all within the reach of state of the art in circuit-QED experiments.