Experimental Determination of the Statistics of Photons Emitted by a Tunnel Junction

2010/01/09 by Eva Zakka-Bajjani, E. Zakka-Bajjani, Joseph Dufouleur +6 · 43 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Detector #Electron #Microwave #Noise (video) #Optics #Photon #Photon statistics #Physics #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #Shot noise #Statistics #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.104.206802

published in Physical Review Letters 104(20), 206802 (American Physical Society) · Submitted to Phys.Rev.Lett

arxiv created 2010/01/09 · openalex publication_date 2010/05/18 · arxiv updated 2015/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We report on an Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment probing the statistics of microwave photons emitted by a tunnel junction in the shot-noise regime at low temperature. By measuring the cross correlation of the 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 hν/e.

Citations

• Antibunched Photons Emitted by a Quantum Point Contact out of Equilibrium
• Experimental Test of the High-Frequency Quantum Shot Noise Theory in a Quantum Point Contact
• Thermal Agitation of Electric Charge in Conductors
• Quantum limits on noise in linear amplifiers
• Coherent and Incoherent States of the Radiation Field
• On the detection of finite-frequency current fluctuations

Cited by

• Cryogenic microwave source based on nanoscale tunnel junctions
• Photonics and spectroscopy in nanojunctions: a theoretical insight