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 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 Josephson junction 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 $g^{(2)}(\tau=0)$ for these different processes and investigate their full crossover numerically. Photon distribution functions show squeezing and other interesting non-Poissonian behavior.