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arXiv:1804.10596 · Physical Review X

Bright On-Demand Source of Antibunched Microwave Photons Based on Inelastic Cooper Pair Tunneling

A. Grimm, F. Blanchet, R. Albert, J. Leppäkangas, S. Jebari, Dibyendu Hazra, F. Gustavo, J.-L. Thomassin, Eva Dupont-Ferrier, F. Portier, M. Hofheinz

Published Apr 24, 2019• 35 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Single-photon generation is an important proof of the underlying quantum nature of a physical process and a ubiquitous tool for scientific exploration, with applications ranging from spectroscopy and metrology to quantum computing.In the microwave regime, emission of antibunched radiation has so far relied on coherent control of Josephson qubits requiring precisely calibrated microwave pulses.In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the operation of a bright on-demand source of quantum microwave radiation driven by a simple dc voltage bias across a Josephson junction.Our source is based on photon emission into a microwave resonator through inelastic Cooper pair tunneling regulated by a high-impedance RC circuit preventing simultaneous tunnel events.It is characterized by its normalized second-order correlation function of g ð2Þ ð0Þ ≈ 0.43 corresponding to antibunching in the single-photon regime.Our device can be triggered, and its in situ tunable emission rate exceeds those obtained with current microwave singlephoton sources by more than 1 order of magnitude.

DOI
10.1103/physrevx.9.021016

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We experimentally study nanoscale normal-metal-insulator-superconductor junctions coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator. We observe that bias-voltage-controllable single-electron tunneling through the junctions gives rise to a direct conversion between the electrostatic energy and that of microwave photons. The measured power spectral density of the microwave radiation emitted by the resonator exceeds at high bias voltages that of an equivalent single-mode radiation source at 2.5 K although the phonon and electron reservoirs are at subkelvin temperatures. Measurements of the generated power quantitatively agree with a theoretical model in a wide range of bias voltages. Thus, we have developed a microwave source which is compatible with low-temperature electronics and offers convenient in-situ electrical control of the incoherent photon emission rate with a predetermined frequency, without relying on intrinsic voltage fluctuations of heated normal-metal components or suffering from unwanted losses in room temperature cables. Importantly, our observation of negative generated power at relatively low bias voltages provides a novel type of verification of the working principles of the recently discovered quantum-circuit refrigerator.
We demonstrate theoretically that charge transport across a Josephson junction, voltage-biased through a resistive environment, produces antibunched photons. We develop a continuous-mode description of the emitted radiation field in a semi-infinite transmission line terminated by the Josephson junction. Within a perturbative treatment in powers of the tunneling coupling across the Josephson junction, we capture effects originating in charging dynamics of consecutively tunneling Cooper pairs. We find that within a feasible experimental setup the Coulomb blockade provided by high zero-frequency impedance can be used to create antibunched photons at a very high rate and in a very versatile frequency window ranging from a few GHz to a THz.