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arXiv:2308.09048 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Efficient quantum transduction using antiferromagnetic topological insulators

Haowei Xu, Changhao Li, Guoqing Wang, Hao Tang, Paola Cappellaro, Ju Li

Published Aug 15, 2024• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Transduction of quantum information between distinct quantum systems is an essential step in various applications, including quantum communications and quantum computing. However, mediating photons of vastly different frequencies and designing high-performance transducers are highly nontrivial, due to multifaceted and sometimes conflicting requirements. In this work, we first discuss some general principles for quantum transducer design, and then propose solid-state antiferromagnetic topological insulators to serve as particularly effective transducers. First, the antiferromagnetic order can minimize detrimental magnetic influences on nearby quantum systems. Second, topological insulators exhibit band inversion, which can greatly enhance their optical responses. This property, coupled with robust spin-orbit coupling and high spin density, results in strong nonlinear interaction in magnetic topological insulators, thereby substantially improving transduction efficiency. Using $\mathrm{MnB}{\mathrm{i}}_{2}\mathrm{T}{\mathrm{e}}_{4}$ as an example, we discuss potential experimental realizations of quantum transduction based on magnetic topological materials. Particularly, we showcase that quantum transduction efficiency exceeding 90% can be achieved with modest experimental requirements, while the transduction bandwidth can reach the gigahertz range. The strong nonlinear photonic interactions in magnetic topological insulators can find diverse applications besides quantum transduction, such as quantum squeezing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.110.085136

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A quantum transducer converts an input signal to an output probe at a distant frequency band while maintaining the quantum information with high fidelity, which is crucial for quantum networking and distributed quantum sensing and computing. In terms of microwave–optical quantum transduction, the state-of-the-art quantum transducers suffer low transduction efficiency from weak nonlinear coupling, wherein increasing pump power to enhance efficiency inevitably leads to thermal noise from heating. Moreover, we reveal that the efficiency-bandwidth product of a cavity electro-optical or electro-optomechanical transducer is fundamentally limited by pump power and nonlinear coupling coefficient, irrespective of cavity engineering efforts. To overcome this fundamental limit, we propose to noiselessly boost the transduction efficiency by consuming intraband entanglement (e.g., microwave–microwave or optical–optical entanglement in the case of microwave–optical transduction). Via a squeezer–coupler–antisqueezer sandwich structure, the protocol enhances the transduction efficiency to unity in the ideal lossless case, given an arbitrarily weak pump and nonlinear coupling. In practical cavity systems, our entanglement-assisted protocol surpasses the non-assisted fundamental limit of the efficiency-bandwidth product and reduces the threshold cooperativity for positive quantum capacity by a factor proportional to two-mode squeezing gain. Given a fixed cooperativity, our approach increases the broadband quantum capacity by orders of magnitude. The entanglement-assisted advantage is robust to ancilla loss and cavity detuning.