  The exceptionally strong coupling realizable between superconducting qubits
and photons stored in an on-chip microwave resonator allows for the detailed
study of matter-light interactions in the realm of circuit quantum
electrodynamics (QED). Here we investigate the resonant interaction between a
single transmon-type multilevel artificial atom and weak thermal and coherent
fields. We explore up to three photon dressed states of the coupled system in a
linear response heterodyne transmission measurement. The results are in good
quantitative agreement with a generalized Jaynes-Cummings model. Our data
indicates that the role of thermal fields in resonant cavity QED can be studied
in detail using superconducting circuits.
