Microwave photon counter based on Josephson junctions

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Nov 18;107(21):217401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.217401. Epub 2011 Nov 14.

Abstract

We describe a microwave photon counter based on the current-biased Josephson junction. The junction is tuned to absorb single microwave photons from the incident field, after which it tunnels into a classically observable voltage state. Using two such detectors, we have performed a microwave version of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment at 4 GHz and demonstrated a clear signature of photon bunching for a thermal source. The design is readily scalable to tens of parallelized junctions, a configuration that would allow number-resolved counting of microwave photons.