Inelastic scattering of microwave radiation in the Coulomb blockade: Microwave absorption, amplification, and squeezing by inelastic Cooper-pair tunneling
We study scattering of propagating microwave fields by a DC-voltage-biased Josephson junction. At sub-gap voltages, a small Josephson junction works merely as a non-linear boundary that can absorb, amplify, and diversely convert propagating microwaves. We find that in the leading-order perturbation theory of the Josephson coupling energy, the spectral density and quadrature fluctuations of scattered thermal and coherent radiation can be described in terms of the well-known $P(E)$ function. Applying this, we show how thermal and coherent radiation can be absorbed and amplified in a circuit with a resonance frequency. We also show when a coherent input can create a two-mode squeezed output. In addition, we evaluate scattering amplitudes between arbitrary photon-number (Fock) states, describing individual photon multiplication and absorption processes occuring at the junction.