Vacuum-fluctuation-induced Dephasing of a Qubit in Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics

We investigate the measurement-induced dephasing of a qubit coupled with a single-mode cavity in the vacuum limit. Dephasing of the qubit state takes place through the ntanglement of the qubit and the single probe photon sent to the cavity, while the cavity mode never occupies a photon. We find that the qubit state is dephased even if the cavity is always in the vacuum state. This dephasing is caused purely by the interaction between the qubit and the vacuum field. We also show that this vacuum-fluctuation-induced dephasing takes place much faster than the spontaneous decay of the qubit excited state, and therefore our prediction is observable in a real experiment.