A bright on-demand source of anti-bunched microwave photons based on inelastic Cooper pair tunneling

TL;DR

This paper presents a new on-demand microwave photon source using inelastic Cooper pair tunneling, capable of emitting anti-bunched photons with higher rates than previous methods, driven solely by a DC voltage bias.

Contribution

It introduces a simple DC-biased device for on-demand anti-bunched microwave photon emission, surpassing existing sources in emission rate and operational simplicity.

Findings

Achieves anti-bunching with g^{(2)}(0)≈0.43

Emission rate exceeds current microwave single photon sources by over tenfold

Operates with a straightforward DC voltage bias

Abstract

The ability to generate single photons is not only an ubiquitous tool for scientific exploration with applications ranging from spectroscopy and metrology to quantum computing, but also an important proof of the underlying quantum nature of a physical process. In the microwave regime, emission of anti-bunched radiation has so far relied on coherent control of Josephson qubits, where precisely calibrated microwave pulses are needed, and the achievable bandwidth is limited by the anharmonicity of the qubit. Here, we demonstrate the operation of a bright on-demand source of quantum microwave radiation capable of emitting anti-bunched photons based on inelastic Cooper pair tunneling and driven by a simple DC voltage bias. It is characterized by its normalized second order correlation function of $g^{(2)}(0)\approx0.43$ corresponding to anti-bunching in the single photon regime. Our source can be triggered and its emission rate is tunable in situ exceeding rates obtained with current microwave single photon sources by more than one order of magnitude.