Dynamical Regimes of Two Qubits Coupled through a Transmission Line

Abstract: We investigate the reduced dynamics of two identical superconducting qubits capacitively coupled through a finite-length transmission line. Starting from circuit quantization, we derive a circuit Hamiltonian that naturally separates the line modes into even- and odd-parity sectors coupled to collective qubit operators. Depending on the hierarchy between the qubit frequency $ωq$, the mode spacing $ω{TL}$, and the coupling scale $ω_g$, the line acts either as a structured reservoir or as a discrete few-mode coupler. In the long-line continuum limit, each sector is described by a Drude--Lorentz spectral density and the dynamics is solved with the hierarchical equations of motion. Using the Breuer--Laine--Piilo measure, we identify the parameter region in which the reduced dynamics exhibits non-Markovian relaxation. In the short-line limit, the continuum description breaks down and the dynamics becomes respectively multimode or single-mode. This establishes a unified cQED picture of the dynamical regimes of finite-length transmission lines in superconducting-circuit architectures.