Macroscopic quantum superpositions in superconducting circuits

  1. Vitoria A. de Souza,
  2. Caio C. Holanda Ribeiro,
  3. and Vitorio A. De Lorenci
A possible route to test whether macroscopic systems can acquire quantum features using superconducting circuits is here presented. It is shown that under general assumptions a classical
test current pulse of fixed energy and adjustable length acquires quantum features after interacting with the quantum vacuum of the photon field. Further, it is shown that the mere existence of vacuum fluctuations can lead to the breakdown of energy and momentum conservation, and as the length of the pulse grows with respect to the characteristic size of the quantum system, the test pulse undergoes quantum-to-classical transition. This model differs from previous ones for its simplicity and points towards a new way of creating correlated systems suitable for quantum-based technology.