Photon generation from vacuum in non-stationary circuit QED

We study theoretically the non-stationary circuit QED system in which the artificial atom transition frequency has a small periodic modulation in time, prescribed externally. We show that, in the dispersive regime, when the modulation periodicity meets the `resonances', the dynamics may be described by the dynamical Casimir effect, Jaynes-Cummings or Anti-Jaynes-Cummings effective Hamiltonians. In the resonant atom-cavity regime, under the modulation `resonance' the dynamics resembles the behavior of the dynamical Casimir effect in a vibrating cavity containing a resonant two-level atom, and entangled states with two photons can be created from vacuum. Thus, an analog of the dynamical Casimir effect may be simulated in circuit QED, and several photons, as well as entangled states, can be generated from vacuum due to the anti-rotating term in the Rabi Hamiltonian.