Dynamical polaron Ansatz: A theoretical tool for the ultrastrong-coupling regime of circuit QED

In this work we develop a semianalytical variational Ansatz to study the properties of few-photon excitations interacting with a collection of quantum emitters in regimes that go beyond the rotating-wave approximation. This method can be used to approximate both the static and dynamical properties of a superconducting qubit in an open transmission line, including the spontaneous emission spectrum and the resonances in scattering experiments. The approximations are quantitatively accurate for rather strong couplings, as shown by a direct comparison to matrix-product-state numerical methods, and provide also a good qualitative description for stronger couplings well beyond the Markovian regime.