Discrete photon statistics from continuous microwave measurements

Abstract

Photocount statistics are an important tool for the characterization of electromagnetic fields, especially for fields with an irrelevant phase. In the microwave domain, continuous rather than discrete measurements are the norm. Using a novel approach, we recover discrete photon statistics from the cumulants of a continuous distribution of field quadrature measurements. The use of cumulants allows the separation between the signal of interest and experimental noise. Using a parametric amplifier as the first stage of the amplification chain, we extract useful data from up to the sixth cumulant of the continuous distribution of a coherent field, hence recovering up to the third moment of the discrete statistics associated with a signal with much less than one average photon.