Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 82: Cryogenic Detectors and Sensors
TT 82.5: Talk
Thursday, March 12, 2026, 16:00–16:15, HSZ/0103
Detecting single itinerant microwave photons by stroboscopic measurement — •Hanna Zeller1, Lukas Danner1, 2, Max Hofheinz3, Ciprian Padurariu1, Joachim Ankerhold1, and Björn Kubala1, 2 — 1ICQ and IQST, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany — 2German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Quantum Technologies, Ulm, Germany — 3Institut Quantique, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
Josephson-photonics devices have predominantly been used to create microwave radiation in a process where a Cooper pair tunneling across a dc-biased Josephson junction creates photonic excitations in a microwave cavity connected in series. In scenarios where incoming photons are required to enable Cooper pair transfer and trigger subsequent photon emission, their use as amplifiers [1] or single (microwave-) photon detectors [2] has also been investigated.
Here, we present a scheme utilizing a Josephson-photonics device with two cavities as a microwave detector of itinerant photons, where the Josephson-photonics effect implements a stroboscopic projective measurement. Using recently developed techniques to describe the incidence of generic traveling pulses of quantized radiation onto a quantum device [3,4], we optimize the device and find promising performance numbers.
[1] R. Albert, et al. Phys. Rev. X 14, 011011 (2024).
[2] L. Danner et al., arXiv:2510.08030
[3] A. H. Kiilerich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 123604 (2019).
[4] A. H. Kiilerich et al., Phys. Rev. A 102, 023717 (2020).
Keywords: Josephson photonics