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arXiv:1701.07969 · Physical Review Letters

Coherent Microwave-to-Optical Conversion via Six-Wave Mixing in Rydberg Atoms

Jingshan Han, Thibault Vogt, Christian Groß, Dieter Jaksch, Martin Kiffner, Wenhui Li

Published Mar 1, 2018• 130 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present an experimental demonstration of converting a microwave field to an optical field via frequency mixing in a cloud of cold ^{87}Rb atoms, where the microwave field strongly couples to an electric dipole transition between Rydberg states. We show that the conversion allows the phase information of the microwave field to be coherently transferred to the optical field. With the current energy level scheme and experimental geometry, we achieve a photon-conversion efficiency of ∼0.3% at low microwave intensities and a broad conversion bandwidth of more than 4 MHz. Theoretical simulations agree well with the experimental data, and they indicate that near-unit efficiency is possible in future experiments.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.120.093201

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We present an experimental demonstration of converting a microwave field to an optical field via frequency mixing in a cloud of cold ^{87}Rb atoms, where the microwave field strongly couples to an electric dipole transition between Rydberg states. We show that the conversion allows the phase information of the microwave field to be coherently transferred to the optical field. With the current energy level scheme and experimental geometry, we achieve a photon-conversion efficiency of ∼0.3% at low microwave intensities and a broad conversion bandwidth of more than 4 MHz. Theoretical simulations agree well with the experimental data, and they indicate that near-unit efficiency is possible in future experiments.
We demonstrate microwave-to-optical conversion using six-wave mixing in cold 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms where the microwave field couples to two Rydberg states and propagates collinearly with the converted optical field. Our experiment is performed with a free-space microwave field, and we achieve a conversion efficiency of about 55%5 for the microwave photons entering the conversion medium. In addition, we theoretically investigate all-resonant six-wave mixing and outline a realistic experimental scheme for reaching an efficiency close to 70%.
We show that cold Rydberg gases enable an efficient six-wave mixing process where microwave or terahertz fields are coherently converted into optical fields and vice versa. This process is made possible by the long lifetime of Rydberg states, the strong coupling of millimeter waves to Rydberg transitions and a quantum interference effect related to Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. We show that conversion efficiencies within an independent atom approach are of the order of 95% and analyse the impact of dipole-dipole interactions on our scheme. We find that effective conversion efficiencies in the presence of Rydberg-Rydberg interactions can still be as high as 85% based on an implementation with Rubidium atoms. Our frequency conversion scheme does not require cavities and can be implemented for a broad spectrum of terahertz and microwave fields due to the abundance of transitions within the Rydberg manifold.
We show that cold Rydberg gases enable an efficient six-wave mixing process where terahertz or microwave fields are coherently converted into optical fields and vice versa.This process is made possible by the long lifetime of Rydberg states, the strong coupling of millimeter waves to Rydberg transitions and by a quantum interference effect related to electromagnetically induced transparency.Our frequency conversion scheme applies to a broad spectrum of millimeter waves due to the abundance of transitions within the Rydberg manifold, and we discuss two possible implementations based on focussed terahertz beams and millimeter wave fields confined by a waveguide, respectively.We analyse a realistic example for the interconversion of terahertz and optical fields in rubidium atoms and find that the conversion efficiency can in principle exceed 90%.
We experimentally observe coherent generation of a near-infrared optical field through a three-wave mixing phenomenon in an atomic energy level scheme of Rb85 atoms. This nonlinear generation process in a centro-symmetric thermally broadened atomic system is made possible through a novel interaction between induced electric and magnetic dipoles. The two-photon and three-photon coherence present in our scheme eliminates excited state decoherence. Thus, our scheme represents a minimal optical decoherence scheme which could be used to transfer quantum states between microwave-to-optical frequency regimes with near-unit fidelity.
Abstract We propose an efficient scheme for microwave-to-optical quantum frequency conversion mediated by a single atom simultaneously coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator and an optical cavity. The atom mediates efficient interactions between the two electromagnetic modes via non-linear frequency mixing owing to the presence of huge microwave transition dipole moments between nearby Rydberg states as well as suitable optical transitions between low-lying states. In the regime of four-wave mixing with off-resonant fields, the excited states can be adiabatically eliminated, leading to an effective Hamiltonian that directly describes the two-mode interaction responsible for the frequency conversion. However, in this regime, the converter is slow, hence sensitive to losses due to cavity decays. To enhance the performance of the conversion process, we employ pulse engineering to tailor the atom-field couplings. The resulting protocol exhibits high robustness against decoherence and parameter fluctuations, making it well suited for realistic experimental implementations. Our scheme provides a promising route toward high-fidelity and scalable hybrid quantum interfaces connecting superconducting and optical quantum networks.
Rydberg EIT-based microwave sensing has limited microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth due to fundamental limitation in the optical pumping rate to its dark state. We demonstrate a parametric six-wave mixing of optical probe and coupling fields driving the atoms to a Rydberg state via two-photon excitation and two microwave fields with frequency offset of δδδ driving the Rydberg-Rydberg transition in thermal atomic vapor. Microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth of 171717 MHz is achieved in the present experiment which is limited by the available coupling power. Further theoretical investigation of the system presents higher modulation bandwidth with larger coupling Rabi frequency.