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We show experimentally that a dc-biased Josephson junction in series with two microwave resonators emits entangled beams of microwaves leaking out of the resonators. In the absence of a stationary phase reference for characterizing the entanglement of the outgoing beams, we measure second-order coherence functions for proving entanglement up to an emission rate of 2.5 billion photon pairs per second. The experimental results are found in quantitative agreement with theory, proving that the low frequency noise of the dc bias is the main limitation for the coherence time of the entangled beams. This agreement allows us to evaluate the entropy of entanglement of the resonators, and to identify the improvements that could bring this device closer to a useful bright source of entangled microwaves for quantum-technological applications.

We theoretically investigate a near-quantum-limited parametric amplifier based on the nonlinear dynamics of quasiparticles flowing through a superconducting-insulator-superconducting junction. Photon-assisted tunneling, resulting from the combination of dc- and ac-voltage bias, gives rise to a strong parametric interaction for the electromagnetic modes reflected by the junction coupled to a transmission line. We show phase-sensitive and phase-preserving amplification, together with single- and two-mode squeezing. For an aluminum junction pumped at twice the center frequency, $\omega_0/2\pi=6$~GHz, we predict narrow-band phase-sensitive amplification of microwaves signals to more than 20 dB, and broadband phase-preserving amplification of 20 dB over a 1.2 GHz 3-dB bandwidth. We also predict single- and two-mode squeezing reaching more than -12 dB over 5.3 GHz 3-dB bandwidth. Moreover, with a simple impedance matching circuit, we demonstrate 3 dB bandwidth reaching 4.3 GHz for 20 dB of gain. A key feature of the device is that its performance can be controlled in-situ with the applied dc- and ac-voltage biases., Comment: Accepted for publication at the Physical Review Applied. 12 pages and 9 figures

Superconductivity can be understood in terms of a phase transition from an uncorrelated electron gas to a condensate of Cooper pairs in which the relative phases of the constituent electrons are coherent over macroscopic length scales. The degree of correlation is quantified by a complex-valued order parameter, whose amplitude is proportional to the strength of the pairing potential in the condensate. Supercurrent-carrying states are associated with non-zero values of the spatial gradient of the phase. The pairing potential and several physical observables of the Cooper condensate can be manipulated by means of temperature, current bias, dishomogeneities in the chemical composition or application of a magnetic field. Here we show evidence of complete suppression of the energy gap in the local density of quasiparticle states (DOS) of a superconducting nanowire upon establishing a phase difference equal to pi over a length scale comparable to the superconducting coherence length. These observations are consistent with a complete collapse of the pairing potential in the center of the wire, in accordance with theoretical modeling based on the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity in diffusive systems. Our spectroscopic data, fully exploring the phase-biased states of the condensate, highlight the profound effect that extreme phase gradients exert on the amplitude of the pairing potential. Moreover, the sharp magnetic response observed near the onset of the superconducting gap collapse regime can be exploited to realize ultra-low noise magnetic flux detectors., Comment: 7 pages, 5 color figures plus supporting info

International audience; When combining lumped mesoscopic electronic components to form a circuit, quantum fluctuations of electrical quantities lead to a non-linear electromagnetic interaction between the components that is not generally understood. The Landauer-B\"uttiker formalism that is frequently used to describe non-interacting coherent mesoscopic components is not directly suited to describe such circuits since it assumes perfect voltage bias, i.e. the absence of fluctuations. Here, we show that for short coherent conductors of arbitrary transmission, the Landauer-B\"uttiker formalism can be extended to take into account quantum voltage fluctuations similarly to what is done for tunnel junctions. The electrodynamics of the whole circuit is then formally worked out disregarding the non-Gaussianity of fluctuations. This reveals how the aforementioned non-linear interaction operates in short coherent conductors: voltage fluctuations induce a reduction of conductance through the phenomenon of dynamical Coulomb blockade but they also modify their internal density of states leading to an additional electrostatic modification of the transmission. Using this approach we can account quantitatively for conductance measurements performed on Quantum Point Contacts in series with impedances of the order of $R_K = h / e^2$. Our work should enable a better engineering of quantum circuits with targeted properties.

Heat transport has large potentialities to unveil new physics in mesoscopic systems. A striking illustration is the integer quantum Hall regime, where the robustness of Hall currents limits information accessible from charge transport. Consequently, the gapless edge excitations are incompletely understood. The effective edge states theory describes them as prototypal one-dimensional chiral fermions - a simple picture that explains a large body of observations and calls for quantum information experiments with quantum point contacts in the role of beam splitters. However, it is in ostensible disagreement with the prevailing theoretical framework that predicts, in most situations, additional gapless edge modes. Here, we present a setup which gives access to the energy distribution, and consequently to the energy current, in an edge channel brought out-of-equilibrium. This provides a stringent test of whether the additional states capture part of the injected energy. Our results show it is not the case and thereby demonstrate regarding energy transport, the quantum optics analogy of quantum point contacts and beam splitters. Beyond the quantum Hall regime, this novel spectroscopy technique opens a new window for heat transport and out-of-equilibrium experiments., Comment: 13 pages including supplementary information, Nature Physics in print

We present an input-output formalism describing a tunnel junction strongly coupled to its electromagnetic environment. We exploit it in order to investigate the dynamics of the radiation being emitted and scattered by the junction. We find that the non-linearity imprinted in the electronic transport by a properly designed environment generates strongly squeezed radiation. Our results show that the interaction between a quantum conductor and electromagnetic fields can be exploited as a resource to design simple sources of non-classical radiation., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, includes Supplementary

We report the efficient coupling of a $50\,\Omega$ microwave circuit to a high impedance conductor. We use an impedance transformer consisting of a $\lambda/4$ co-planar resonator whose inner conductor contains an array of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), providing the resonator with a large and tunable lineic inductance $\mathcal{L}\sim 80 \mu_0$, resulting in a large characteristic impedance $Z_C\sim 1\,\mathrm{k}\Omega$. The impedance matching efficiency is characterized by measuring the shot noise power emitted by a dc biased high resistance tunnel junction connected to the resonator. We demonstrate matching to impedances in the $15$ to $35\,\mathrm{k}\Omega$ range with bandwidths above $100\,\mathrm{MHz}$ around a resonant frequency tunable in the $4$ to $6\,\mathrm{GHz}$ range., Comment: Published in Applied Physics Letters

We demonstrate a direct approach to investigate heat transport in the fractional quantum Hall regime. At filling factor of 4/3, we inject power at quantum point contacts and detect the related heating from the activated current through a quantum dot. The experiment reveals a chargeless heat transport from a significant heating that occurs upstream of the power injection point, in the absence of a concomitant electrical current. By tuning in-situ the edge path, we show that the chargeless heat transport does not follow the reverse direction of the electrical current path along the edge. This unexpected heat conduction demonstrates a novel aspect, yet to be elucidated, of the physics in fractional quantum Hall systems., Manuscript (5 pages, 3 figures) and supplementary material (8 pages, 9 figures); v2 includes additional supplementary material and references; to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett

We investigate the energy exchanges along an electronic quantum channel realized in the integer quantum Hall regime at filling factor $\nu_L=2$. One of the two edge channels is driven out-of-equilibrium and the resulting electronic energy distribution is measured in the outer channel, after several propagation lengths $0.8~\mu$m$\leq L\leq30~\mu$m. Whereas there are no discernable energy transfers toward thermalized states, we find efficient energy redistribution between the two channels without particle exchanges. At long distances $L\geq10~\mu$m, the measured energy distribution is a hot Fermi function whose temperature is lower than expected for two interacting channels, which suggests the contribution of extra degrees of freedom. The observed short energy relaxation length challenges the usual description of quantum Hall excitations as quasiparticles localized in one edge channel., Comment: To be published in PRL, 10 pages including supplementary material

Interedge channel interactions in the quantum Hall regime at filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=2$ are analyzed within a plasmon scattering formalism. We derive analytical expressions for energy redistribution among edge channels and for high-frequency noise, which are shown to fully characterize the low energy plasmon scattering. In the strong-interaction limit, the predictions for energy redistribution are compared with recent experimental data and found to reproduce most of the observed features. Quantitative agreement can be achieved by assuming 25% of the injected energy is lost toward other degrees of freedom, possibly the additional gapless excitations predicted for smooth edge potentials.

We observed the recently predicted quantum suppression of dynamical Coulomb blockade on short coherent conductors by measuring the conductance of a quantum point contact embedded in a tunable on-chip circuit. Taking advantage of the circuit modularity we measured most parameters used by the theory. This allowed us to perform a reliable and quantitative experimental test of the theory. Dynamical Coulomb blockade corrections, probed up to the second conductance plateau of the quantum point contact, are found to be accurately normalized by the same Fano factor as quantum shot noise, in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions., 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

We report on the fabrication and characterization of a two-terminal mesoscopic interferometer based on three V/Cu/V Josephson junctions having nanoscale cross-section. The junctions have been arranged in a double-ring geometry realized by metallic thin film deposition through a suspended mask defined by electron beam lithography. Although a significant amount of asymmetry between the critical current of each junction is observed we show that the interferometer is able to suppress the supercurrent to a level lower than 6 parts per thousand, being here limited by measurement resolution. The present nano-device is suitable for low-temperature magnetometric and gradiometric measurements over the micrometric scale., 5 pages, 4 figures