Antibunched Photons Emitted by a Quantum Point Contact out of Equilibrium

Motivated by the experimental search for "GHz nonclassical light," we identify the conditions under which current fluctuations in a narrow constriction generate sub-Poissonian radiation. Antibunched electrons generically produce bunched photons, because the same photon mode can be populated by electrons decaying independently from a range of initial energies. Photon antibunching becomes possible at frequencies close to the applied voltage V x e/variant Planck's over 2pi, when the initial energy range of a decaying electron is restricted. The condition for photon antibunching in a narrow frequency interval below eV/variant Planck's over 2pi reads [SigmanTn(1-Tn)]2<2Sigman[Tn(1-Tn)]2, with Tn an eigenvalue of the transmission matrix. This condition is satisfied in a quantum point contact, where only a single Tn differs from 0 or 1. The photon statistics is then a superposition of binomial distributions.