Low-frequency Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg interference in dissipative superconducting qubits

Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg (LZS) interference of continuously driven superconducting qubits is studied. Going beyond the second order perturbation expansion, we find a time dependent stationary population evolution as well as unsymmetrical microwave driven Landau-Zener transitions, resulting from the nonresonant terms which are neglected in rotating-wave approximation. For the low-frequency driving, the qubit population at equilibrium is a periodical function of time, owing to the contribution of the nonresonant terms. In order to obtain the average population, it is found that the average approximation based on the perturbation approach can be applied to the low-frequency region. For the extremely low frequency which is much smaller than the decoherence rate, we develop noncoherence approximation by dividing the evolution into discrete time steps during which the coherence is lost totally. These approximations present comprehensive analytical descriptions of LZS interference in most of parameter space of frequency and decoherence rate, agreeing well with those of the numerical simulations and providing a simple but integrated understanding to system dynamics. The application of our models to microwave cooling can obtain the minimal frequency to realize effective microwave cooling. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.