Cyclically Operated Microwave Single-Photon Counter with Sensitivity of 10−22W/Hz

Single-photon detection played an important role in the development of quantum optics. Its implementation in the microwave domain is challenging because the photon energy is five orders of magnitude smaller. In recent years, significant progress has been made in developing single microwave photon detectors (SMPDs) based on superconducting quantum bits or bolometers. In this paper we present a practical SMPD based on the irreversible transfer of an incoming photon to the excited state of a transmon qubit by a four-wave mixing process. This device achieves a detection efficiency $\ensuremath{\eta}=0.43$ and an operational dark count rate $\ensuremath{\alpha}=85\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$, mainly due to the out-of-equilibrium microwave photons in the input line. The corresponding power sensitivity is $\mathcal{S}={10}^{\ensuremath{-}22}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{W}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$, one order of magnitude lower than the state of the art. The detector operates continuously over hour time-scales with a duty cycle ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{D}=0.84$, and offers frequency tunability of at least 50 MHz around 7 GHz.