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arXiv:2605.25828

Sideband fingerprints of antibunched light in cascaded quantum wave mixing

R. D. Ivanovskikh, W. V. Pogosov, A. A. Elistratov, A. Yu. Dmitriev, T. R. Sabirov, A. V. Vasenin, S. A. Gunin, O. V. Astafiev

quant-phcond-mat.supr-conphysics.opticsSubmitted May 25, 2026• Announced May 26, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · May 25, 2026v2 · Oct 19, 2026
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Abstract

Quantum wave mixing on a single superconducting qubit produces a hierarchy of coherent side peaks associated with elastic multiphoton scattering pathways. In a cascaded source--probe geometry these pathways become sensitive to the photon statistics of the radiation emitted by the source qubit. We develop an analytical theory of this effect starting from the cascaded master equation in the weak-driving regime. In the coherent-filtering limit $γ_{\rm s}\ggγ_{\rm pr}$, the standard coherent--coherent wave-mixing hierarchy is recovered. In the opposite limit $γ_{\rm pr}\ggγ_{\rm s}$, side peaks associated with multiphoton absorption from the antibunched source field are parametrically suppressed. Numerical solutions confirm the analytical scaling laws. The resulting sideband hierarchy provides a frequency-domain fingerprint of antibunched itinerant microwave light.

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Quantum wave mixing on a single superconducting qubit produces a hierarchy of coherent side peaks associated with elastic multiphoton scattering pathways. In a cascaded source--probe geometry these pathways become sensitive to the photon statistics of the radiation emitted by the source qubit. We develop an analytical theory of this effect starting from the cascaded master equation in the weak-driving regime. In the coherent-filtering limit γs≫γprγ_{\rm s}\ggγ_{\rm pr}γs​≫γpr​, the standard coherent--coherent wave-mixing hierarchy is recovered. In the opposite limit γpr≫γsγ_{\rm pr}\ggγ_{\rm s}γpr​≫γs​, side peaks associated with multiphoton absorption from the antibunched source field are parametrically suppressed. Numerical solutions confirm the analytical scaling laws. The resulting sideband hierarchy provides a frequency-domain fingerprint of antibunched itinerant microwave light.
We develop a theoretical description of quantum wave mixing (QWM) in a cascaded waveguide-QED system of two superconducting qubits, where the probe is driven by an external coherent tone and by the resonance fluorescence of a strongly driven source qubit. Starting from the field correlation functions of the source emission, we derive an effective master-equation treatment for the probe and identify the regime in which the incident fluorescence is characterized by anomalous correlations. When the coherent Rayleigh component of the source spectrum is suppressed, the probe equations of motion become equivalent to those for a qubit driven by a coherent tone and broadband squeezed light, although the ligt emitted by the source is non-Gaussian and antibunched. This equivalence implies a selection rule for the peaks of the QWM spectrum, with a strong suppression of sidebands associated with processes involving an odd number of photons taken from the source field. Numerical simulations of the full cascaded two-qubit model for different ratios of radiative decay rates unambiguously confirm the participation of correlated photon pairs in QWM processes. The current research illustrates that the analysis of peak amplitudes can be used to probe photon statistics in the incident nonclassical field.
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A superconducting qubit in a waveguide behaves as a point-like nonlinear element. If irradiated with nearly resonant microwave pulses, the qubit undergoes quantum evolution and generates coherent fields at sideband frequencies due to elastic scattering. This effect is called Quantum Wave Mixing (QWM), and the number of emerged side components depends on the number of interacting photons. By driving a superconducting qubit with short pulses with alternating carrier frequencies, we control the maximal number of photons simultaneously interacting with a two-level system by varying the number and duration of applied pulses. Increasing the number of pulses results in consecutive growth of the order of non-linearity, which manifests in additional coherent side peaks appearing in the spectrum of scattered radiation while the whole spectrum maintains its asymmetry.
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We theoretically consider wave mixing under the irradiation of a single qubit by two photon fields. The first signal is a classical monochromatic drive, while the second one is a nonclassical light. Particularly, we address two examples of a nonclassical light: (i) a broadband squeezed light and (ii) a periodically excited quantum superposition of Fock states with 0 and 1 photons. The mixing of classical and nonclassical photon fields gives rise to side peaks due to the elastic multiphoton scattering. We show that a side peaks structure is distinct from the situation when two classical fields are mixed. The most striking feature is that some peaks are absent. The analysis of peak amplitudes can be used to probe photon statistics in the nonclassical mode.
The statistics of photons in the resonance fluorescence of a qubit excited by microwave and radio-frequency (RF) fields have been studied. It has been established that the coherent dissipative dynamics of the qubit with allowance for multiphoton emission and absorption of RF photons in each act of emission and absorption of a microwave photon results in periodic alternation of photon bunching and antibunching. It has been shown that periodically varying statistics of photons can be smoothly transformed to the purely sub-Poisson statistics by varying the parameters of the RF field. The conditions for the formation of the “collapse-revival” of oscillations in the second-order correlation function of photons have been determined. The described effects can be implemented on spin and superconducting qubits, quantum dots, and qubit-mechanical hybrid systems.