  We discuss the prospects of employing an NbN superconducting microwave
stripline resonator for studying the dynamical Casimir effect experimentally.
Preliminary experimental results, in which optical illumination is employed for
modulating the resonance frequencies of the resonator, show that such a system
is highly promising for this purpose. Moreover, we discuss the undesirable
effect of heating which results from the optical illumination, and show that
degradation in noise properties can be minimized by employing an appropriate
design.
