# Two-Photon Resonance Fluorescence of a Ladder-Type Atomic System

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates microwave two-photon resonance fluorescence using a superconducting ladder-type atom, revealing super-bunched emission and paving the way for multi-photon microwave sources.

## Contribution

It presents the first observation of two-photon resonance fluorescence in a superconducting artificial atom, including spectral and correlation measurements.

## Key findings

- Resonance fluorescence peak becomes comparable to single-photon emission.
- Emission at the fundamental frequency remains antibunched.
- Two-photon transition emission is superbunched.

## Abstract

Multi-photon emitters are a sought-after resource in quantum photonics. Nonlinear interactions between a multi-level atomic system and a coherent drive can lead to resonant two-photon emission, but harvesting light from this process has remained a challenge due to the small oscillator strengths involved. Here we present a study of two-photon resonance fluorescence at microwave frequencies, using a superconducting, ladder-type artificial atom, a transmon, strongly coupled to a waveguide. We drive the two-photon transition between the ground and second-excited state at increasingly high powers and observe a resonance fluorescence peak whose intensity becomes comparable to single-photon emission until it splits into a Mollow-like triplet. We measure photon correlations of frequency-filtered spectral lines and find that while emission at the fundamental frequency stays antibunched, the resonance fluorescence peak at the two-photon transition is superbunched. Our results provide a route towards the realization of multi-photon sources in the microwave domain.