Engineering three-body interaction and Pfaffian states in circuit QED systems

Abstract: We demonstrate a scheme to engineer the three-body interaction in circuit-QED systems by tuning a fluxonium qubit. Connecting such qubits in a square lattice and controlling the tunneling dynamics, in the form of a synthesized magnetic field, for the photon-like excitations of the system, allows the implementation of a parent Hamiltonian whose ground state is the Pfaffian wave function. Furthermore, we show that the addition of the next-nearest neighbor tunneling stabilizes the ground state, recovering the expected topological degeneracy even for small lattices. Finally, we discuss the implementation of these ideas with the current technology.