Single-Qubit Lasing and Cooling at the Rabi Frequency

For a superconducting qubit driven to perform Rabi oscillations and coupled to a slow electromagnetic or nanomechanical oscillator we describe previously unexplored quantum optics effects. When the Rabi frequency is tuned to resonance with the oscillator, the latter can be driven far from equilibrium. Blue detuned driving leads to a population inversion in the qubit and a bistability with lasing behavior of the oscillator; for red detuning the qubit cools the oscillator. This behavior persists at the symmetry point where the qubit-oscillator coupling is quadratic and decoherence effects are minimized. There the system realizes a “single-atom-two-photon laser.”