Superradiant Phase Transition in a Superconducting Circuit in Thermal Equilibrium

Phys Rev Lett. 2016 Oct 21;117(17):173601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.173601. Epub 2016 Oct 20.

Abstract

We propose a superconducting circuit that shows a superradiant phase transition (SRPT) in thermal equilibrium. The existence of the SRPT is confirmed analytically in the limit of an infinite number of artificial atoms. We also perform a numerical diagonalization of the Hamiltonian with a finite number of atoms and observe an asymptotic behavior approaching the infinite limit as the number of atoms increases. The SRPT can also be interpreted intuitively in a classical analysis.