Probing Multi-Site Correlators in a Bose Hubbard lattice

Microwave photons can be engineered to exhibit strong interactions and create highly correlated quantum states using superconducting quantum circuits and the circuit QED framework. Using qubits as interacting lattice sites and coupling these sites together, we build a 1D Bose-Hubbard lattice for strongly interacting photons. In previous work, we developed a method to dissipatively stabilize our lattice in an incompressible state, and applied it to our system to realize an n=1 Mott insulating phase of light. Recent improvements to our apparatus enable us to use our site- and time- resolved readout to probe multi-site correlations and thus characterize delocalized lattice states. We discuss experiments on our system such as melting our prepared Mott insulator into a superfluid by adiabatically tuning the volume of our chain and investigate correlations during both the cooling and the steady state. The local control over Hamiltonian parameters makes superconducting circuits a versatile platform for studying the relationship between highly correlated quantum matter and quantum thermodynamics.