Fabrication technology of and symmetry breaking in superconducting quantum circuits

Superconducting quantum circuits are promising systems for experiments testing fundamental quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale and for applications in quantum information processing. We report on the fabrication and characterization of superconducting flux qubits, readout dc SQUIDs, on-chip shunting capacitors, and high-quality coplanar waveguide resonators. Furthermore, we discuss the tunability and fundamental symmetry aspects inherent to all superconducting qubits, which can be regarded as artificial solid-state atoms. Comparing them to their natural counterparts, we discuss first- and second-order energy shifts due to static control fields. Additionally, we present an intuitive derivation of the first- and second-order matrix elements for level transitions in the presence of coherent microwave driving.