Effective Landau-Zener transitions in the circuit dynamical Casimir effect with time-varying modulation frequency

We consider the dissipative single-qubit circuit QED architecture in which the atomic transition frequency undergoes a weak external time modulation. For sinusoidal modulation with linearly varying frequency we derive effective Hamiltonians that resemble the Landau-Zener problem of finite duration associated with a two- or multilevel systems. The corresponding off-diagonal coupling coefficients originate either from the rotating or the counter-rotating terms in the Rabi Hamiltonian, depending on the values of the modulation frequency. It is demonstrated that in the dissipationless case one can accomplish almost complete transitions between the eigenstates of the bare Rabi Hamiltonian even for relatively short durations of the frequency sweep. To assess the experimental feasibility of our scheme we solved numerically the phenomenological and the microscopic quantum master equations in the Markovian regime at zero temperature. Both models exhibit qualitatively similar behavior and indicate that photon generation from vacuum via effective Landau-Zener transitions could be implemented with the current technology on the time scales of a few microseconds. Moreover, unlike the harmonic dynamical Casimir effect implementations, our proposal does not require precise knowledge of the resonant modulation frequency to accomplish meaningful photon generation.