Bistable Josephson cell as a single microwave photon sensor

Abstract

The dissipative dynamics of a bistable Josephson cell in a transmission line resonator in a weakly dissipative regime was studied theoretically and numerically. The bistable cell consists of a quantronium qubit and a nonlinear bifurcation amplifier. Under the rotating wave approximation, the problem of the system evolution in a boson thermostat is reduced to the Pauli equation. Using the master equation, we have numerically studied the dissipative dynamics of the system. It was shown that the nonlinear bifurcation amplifier can determine the qubit states and the system can be used as a detector of single microwave photons.