Experimental determination of the statistics of photons emitted by a tunnel junction

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates the statistical nature of GHz photons emitted by a tunnel junction, revealing chaotic photon statistics despite Poissonian electron statistics, using a microwave Hanbury-Brown Twiss setup.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of chaotic photon statistics emitted by a tunnel junction in the shot noise regime.

Findings

Photons exhibit chaotic statistics despite electrons being Poissonian.

Photon statistics are measured via crosscorrelated fluctuations in a microwave setup.

Chaotic photon behavior persists even at low photon occupation numbers.

Abstract

We report on a microwave Hanbury-Brown Twiss experiment probing the statistics of GHz photons emitted by a tunnel junction in the shot noise regime at low temperature. By measuring the crosscorrelated 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 $h\nu/e$.