Hanbury Brown–Twiss noise correlations to probe the Statistics of GHz Photons emitted by quantum conductors

In microwave current noise power measurements, a detector is used which measures the power emitted by the device in the external circuit. This power can be viewed as a flux of (microwave) photons. An interesting question is the nature of the photon statistics associated with the noise power. While for thermal noise one expects classical photon statistics (Bose-Einstein), recently it has been shown theoretically that shot noise may lead to non-classical photon statistics. We propose an original cryogenic experimental scheme to characterize the statistics of photons emitted by conductors at GHz frequency. The experiments, a microwave analog of optical Hanbury Brown Twiss photon correlations, is able to distinguish the statistics of the black-body radiation associated with thermal electronic noise from the statistics of a coherent monochromatic microwave source. The experiments displays the sensitivity required for future investigations of non classical photons emitted by quantum conductors.