Stepping closer to pulsed single microwave photon detectors for axions search

Abstract

Axions detection requires the ultimate sensitivity down to the single photon limit. In the microwave region this corresponds to energies in the yJ range. This extreme sensitivity has to be combined with an extremely low dark count rate, since the probability of axions conversion into microwave photons is supposed to be very low. To face this complicated task, we followed two promising approaches that both rely on the use of superconducting devices based on the Josephson effect. The first one is to use a single Josephson junction (JJ) as a switching detector (i.e. exploiting the superconducting to normal state transition in presence of microwave photons). We designed a device composed of a coplanar waveguide terminated on a current biased Josephson junction. We tested its efficiency to pulsed (pulse duration 10 ns) microwave signals, since this configuration is closer to an actual axions search experiment. We show how our device is able to reach detection capability of the order of 10 photons with frequency 8 GHz. The second approach is based on an intrinsically quantum device formed by two resonators coupled only via a superconducting qubit network (SQN). This approach relies on quantum nondemolition measurements of the resonator photons. We show that injecting RF power into the resonator, the frequency position of the resonant drop in the transmission coefficient (S21) can be modulated up to 4 MHz. We anticipate that, once optimized, both the devices have the potential to reach single photon sensitivity.

References in corpus (10)

• Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit
• Dielectric Haloscopes: A New Way to Detect Axion Dark Matter
• Invisible Axion Search Methods
• Searching for Dark Matter with a Superconducting Qubit
• Axion search with a quantum-limited ferromagnetic haloscope
• Search for invisible axion dark matter of mass m${}_a=43\mu$eV with the QUAX--$a\gamma$ experiment
• Waveguide Bandgap Engineering with an Array of Superconducting Qubits
• Single-photon detection with a Josephson junction coupled to a resonator
• Quantum dynamics of disordered arrays of interacting superconducting qubits: signatures of quantum collective states
• Towards the Heisenberg limit in microwave photon detection by a qubit array

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Key Issues Review: Useful autonomous quantum machines
• Characterization of a Transmon Qubit in a 3D Cavity for Quantum Machine Learning and Photon Counting
• Experimental demonstrations of Josephson threshold detectors for broadband microwave photons detection
• Dispersive detection of single microwave photons with quantum dots
• Measuring weak microwave signals via current-biased Josephson Junctions II: Arriving at single-photon detection sensitivity