Experimental Study Of Hysteretic Josephson Junctions As Threshold Detectors Of Shot Noise

We present an experimental study of Josephson Junctions as threshold detectors for an investigation of shot noise. The main advantage of this technique is that the detector and the noise source can be located in close vicinity on a single chip, avoiding natural problems of usual approaches, like filter and bandwidth requirements on connecting wires between samples in a cryogenic environment and measurement apparatus at room temperature. Our first experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed technique by exhibiting sensitivity to the shot noise and they allow an estimation of the feasibility of further experiments to characterize mesoscopic conductors.