Synchronization and bistability of qubit coupled to a driven dissipative oscillator

Abstract

We study numerically the behavior of qubit coupled to a quantum dissipative driven oscillator (resonator). Above a critical coupling strength the qubit rotations become synchronized with the oscillator phase. In the synchronized regime, at certain parameters, the qubit exhibits tunneling between two orientations with a macroscopic change of number of photons in the resonator. The life times in these metastable states can be enormously large. The synchronization leads to a drastic change of qubit radiation spectrum with appearance of narrow lines corresponding to recently observed single artificial-atom lasing [O. Astafiev {\it et al.} Nature {\bf 449}, 588 (2007)].