Prospects of employing superconducting stripline resonators for studying the dynamical Casimir effect experimentally

We discuss the prospects of employing an NbN superconducting microwave stripline resonator for studying the dynamical Casimir effect experimentally. Preliminary experiments, 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. In addition, 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. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All fights reserved.