Photon-assisted Dynamical Coulomb Blockade in a Tunnel Junction

Abstract: We report measurements of photon-assisted transport and noise in a tunnel junction in the regime of dynamical Coulomb blockade. We have measured both dc non-linear transport and low frequency noise in the presence of an ac excitation at frequencies up to 33 GHz. In both experiments we observe replicas at finite voltage of the zero bias features, a phenomenon characteristic of photon emission/absorption. However, the ac voltage necessary to explain our data is notably different for transport and noise, indicating that usual theory of photon-assisted phenomena fails to account for our observations.