Non-classical light from superconducting resonators coupled to voltage-biased Josephson junctions

Abstract

The interplay of the tunneling transfer of charges and the emission and absorption of light can be investigated in a set-up, where a voltage-biased Josephson junction (JJ) is placed in series to a microwave cavity. Here, we concentrate on the emission process and show that due to the inherent nonlinearity of the JJ tunneling Cooper-pairs can create a variety of non-classical states of light. Depending on experimental parameters and tuning the device can be described by effective Hamiltonians, indicating specific photon creation mechanisms which lead to strongly bunched or anti-bunched light emission. We derive explicit analytical expressions for the photon correlation function for these different processes and investigate their full crossover numerically. Photon distribution functions show squeezing and other interesting non-Poissonian behavior.