Deterministic Down-Converter and Continuous Photon-Pair Source within the Bad-Cavity Limit

The development, characterization, and control of N-photon sources are instrumental for quantum technological applications. This work constitutes a step forward in this direction, where we propose a cavity quantum electrodynamics setup designed for the generation of photon pairs. We identify both the regime where our system works as a deterministic down-converter of a single input photon and as an optimal two-photon source under weak continuous driving. We use both the scattering and master equation formalisms to characterize the system, and from their connection naturally arises a physical criterion characterizing when weakly driven systems behave as continuous antibunched two-photon sources. We also show that the outgoing photons share nontrivial quantum correlations in general. We provide a specific implementation based on state-of-the-art superconducting circuits, showing how our proposal is within the reach of current technologies. As an outlook, we show the proposal can be extended to achieve deterministic conversion of a single photon into N photons.