False qubits?: Polarization of light and Josephson junction

Abstract

We compare two physical systems: polarization degrees of freedom of a macroscopic light beam and the Josephson junction (JJ) in the "charge qubit regime". The first system obviously cannot carry genuine quantum information and we show that the maximal entanglement which could be encoded into polarization of two light beams scales like 1/(photon number). Two theories of JJ, one leading to the picture of "JJ-qubit" and the other based on the mean-field approach are discussed. The later, which seems to be more appropriate, implies that the JJ system is, essentially, mathematically equivalent to the polarization of a light beam with the number of photons replaced by the number of Cooper pairs. The existing experiments consistent with the "JJ-qubit" picture and the theoretical arguments supporting, on the contrary, the classical model are briefly discussed. The Franck-Hertz-type experiment is suggested as an ultimate test of the JJ nature.