  Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics (cQED), the study of the interaction between
superconducting circuits behaving as artificial atoms and 1-dimensional
transmission-line resonators, has shown much promise for quantum information
processing tasks. For the purposes of quantum computing it is usual to
approximate the artificial atoms as 2-level qubits, and much effort has been
expended on attempts to isolate these qubits from the environment and to invent
ever more sophisticated control and measurement schemes. Rather than focussing
on these technological aspects of the field, this thesis investigates the
opportunities for using these carefully engineered systems for answering
questions of fundamental physics.
