Quantum computation and quantum optics with circuit QED

The idea of harnessing superconducting circuits to act as artificial atoms, and coupling them to microwave transmission line resonators has come a long way since its first realization in 2004. This architecture, termed circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED), has been successfully employed in a number of experiments probing fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, and has enabled impressive progress towards quantum computing. At the same time, circuit QED constitutes an appealing testbed for the theoretical understanding and modeling of driven open quantum systems. This talk gives an introduction to the basics of circuit QED, and a discussion of recent results obtained with the new transmon qubit, an improved Cooper pair box immune to 1/f charge noise