Kavli Affiliate: Andrei Faraon
| First 5 Authors: Tian Xie, Rikuto Fukumori, Jiahui Li, Andrei Faraon,
| Summary:
Microwave-to-optical transduction of single photons will play an essential
role in interconnecting future superconducting quantum devices, with
applications in distributed quantum computing and secure communications.
Various transducers that couple microwave and optical modes via an optical
drive have been developed, utilizing nonlinear phenomena such as the Pockels
effect and a combination of electromechanical, piezoelectric, and
optomechanical couplings. However, the limited strength of these
nonlinearities, set by bulk material properties, requires the use of high
quality factor resonators, often in conjunction with sophisticated
nano-fabrication of suspended structures. Thus, an efficient and scalable
transduction technology is still an outstanding goal. Rare-earth ion (REI)
doped crystals provide high-quality atomic resonances that result in effective
second-order nonlinearities stronger by many orders of magnitude compared to
conventional materials. Here, we use ytterbium-171 ions doped in a YVO$_4$
crystal at 340 ppm with an effective resonant $chi^{(2)}$ nonlinearity of ~
10$^7$ pm/V to implement an on-chip microwave-to-optical transducer. Without an
engineered optical cavity, we achieve percent-level efficiencies with an added
noise as low as 1.24(9) photons. To showcase scalability, we demonstrate the
interference of photons originating from two simultaneously operated
transducers, enabled by the inherent absolute frequencies of the atomic
transitions. These results establish REI-based transducers as a highly
competitive transduction platform, provide existing REI-based quantum
technologies a native link to various leading quantum microwave platforms, and
pave the way toward remote transducer-assisted entanglement of superconducting
quantum machines.
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