English

A superconducting detector that counts microwave photons up to two

Quantum Physics 2021-01-04 v1

Abstract

We propose a detector of microwave photons which can distinguish the vacuum state, one-photon state, and the states with two or more photons. Its operation is based on the two-photon transition in a biased Josephson junction and detection occurs when it switches from a superconducting to a normal state. We model the detector theoretically. The detector performs with more than 90% success probability in several microseconds. It is sensitive for the 8.2GHz photons. The working frequency could be set at the design stage in the range from about 1GHz to 20GHz.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.04625,
  title  = {A superconducting detector that counts microwave photons up to two},
  author = {Andrii M. Sokolov and Frank K. Wilhelm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.04625},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:09:54.527Z