Microwave photon detection at parametric criticality

TL;DR

This paper presents a criticality-enhanced microwave photon detector using a Kerr Josephson parametric amplifier operating near a phase transition, achieving high efficiency and single-photon sensitivity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detection method leveraging phase transition criticality to improve microwave photon detection performance.

Findings

73% detection efficiency

Dark-count rate of 167 kHz

Noise-equivalent power of 3.28 zW/√Hz

Abstract

The detection of microwave fields at single-photon power levels is a much sought-after technology, with practical applications in nanoelectronics and quantum information science. Here we demonstrate a simple yet powerful criticality-enhanced method of microwave photon detection by operating a magnetic-field tunable Kerr Josephson parametric amplifier at the border of a first-order phase transition and close to the critical point. We obtain a 73\% efficiency and a dark-count rate of 167 kHz, corresponding to a responsivity of $1.3 \times 10^{17}~\mathrm{W}^{-1}$ and noise-equivalent power of 3.28 zW/$\sqrt{\rm Hz}$. We verify the single-photon operation by extracting the Poissonian statistics of a coherent probe signal.