orders of magnitude less than their optical counterpart, making the efficient detection of single microwave photons extremely challenging. Here, we demonstrate the detection of a single microwave photon propagating through a waveguide. The detector is implemented with an „impedance-matched“ artificial Λ system comprising the dressed states of a driven superconducting qubit coupled to a microwave resonator. We attain a single-photon detection efficiency of 0.66±0.06 with a reset time of ∼400~ns. This detector can be exploited for various applications in quantum sensing, quantum communication and quantum information processing.
Single microwave-photon detector using an artificial Λ-type three-level system
Single photon detection is a requisite technique in quantum-optics experiments in both the optical and the microwave domains. However, the energy of microwave quanta are four to five