Abstract

We report the observation of zero-point noise squeezing by means of a Josephson- junction parametric amplifier, which has been used previously to squeeze 4.2 K thermal noise¹. To observe quantum noise squeezing, a number of improvements were made on the apparatus; these include the in stallation of two low-noise cryogenic high- electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) amplifiers, which boosted the detector sensitivity an order of magnitude to 215 K. The Josephson- junction parametric amplifier was cooled to 30 mK and was operated in the degenerate mode with the signal carrier frequency at 19.16 GHz. At this frequency the vacuum noise floor is hv/2k = 0.46 K. In the deamplified quadrature a drop in the noise of 0.223 K was observed relative to the pump-off noise floor. The pump-off noise floor was established to be within 3.4 + 2.0% of the vacuum noise floor by varying the temperature of the cold termination at the parametric amplifier's input from 30 mK to 1K. A probe signal at the input of the first HEMT amplifier was used to establish that the detector system saturation was less than 7 × 10⁻⁴ dB. We have thus observed squeezing 47% ± 8% below the vacuum noise floor.

© 1990 Optical Society of America