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arXiv:cond-mat/0403584 · Physical Review Letters

Hanbury Brown–Twiss Correlations to Probe the Population Statistics of GHz Photons Emitted by Conductors

Julien Gabelli, Laure-Hélène Reydellet, Gwendal Fève, Jean‐Marc Berroir, Bernard Plaçais, P. Roche, D. C. Glattli

Published Jul 27, 2004• 57 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present the first study of the statistics of GHz photons in quantum circuits, using Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlations. The super-Poissonian and Poissonian photon statistics of thermal and coherent sources, respectively, made of a resistor and a radio frequency generator, are measured down to the quantum regime at milli-Kelvin temperatures. As photon correlations are linked to the second and fourth moments of current fluctuations, this experiment, which is based on current cryogenic electronics, may become a standard for probing electron/photon statistics in quantum conductors.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.93.056801

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We present the first study of the statistics of GHz photons in quantum circuits, using Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlations. The super-Poissonian and Poissonian photon statistics of thermal and coherent sources, respectively, made of a resistor and a radio frequency generator, are measured down to the quantum regime at milli-Kelvin temperatures. As photon correlations are linked to the second and fourth moments of current fluctuations, this experiment, which is based on current cryogenic electronics, may become a standard for probing electron/photon statistics in quantum conductors.
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We report on an Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment probing the statistics of microwave photons emitted by a tunnel junction in the shot-noise regime at low temperature. By measuring the cross correlation of the fluctuations of the occupation numbers of the photon modes of both detection branches, we show that while the statistics of electrons is Poissonian, the photons obey chaotic statistics. This is observed even for low photon occupation number when the voltage across the junction is close to hν/e.
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Unlike the gravitational waves classically generated by moving macroscopic masses, the diffuse backgrounds of gravitons originate most likely from zero-point fluctuations of the gravitational field amplified by the evolution of the space-time curvature. The resulting entangled states lead to specific second-order correlation effects that could be eventually detected. For a quantitative analysis of this empirical expectation we scrutinize the interactions between the cosmic gravitons and the fundamental mode of a quantized electromagnetic field confined inside a closed optical resonator with perfectly-reflecting walls. We show that the Hanbury-Brown Twiss correlations of the photons are insensitive to the degrees of second-order coherence of the gravitons even barring for the exceedingly small couplings of the problem. Since the degree of second-order coherence of the photons does not reflect the correlation properties of the gravitons, the statistical properties of the gravitons (and their super-Poissonian statistics) cannot be inferred, even in principle, from the intensity correlations of the cavity modes.