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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

Coherent bidirectional microwave-optical conversion using Rydberg atoms

Amir Feizpour, Martin Kiffner, K. T. Kaczmarek, Dieter Jaksch, Joshua Nunn

Published Jan 1, 2016• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Deterministic quantum information processing will require hybrid quantum systems like an interface between microwave and optical photons. We propose a scheme for efficient, multimode and coherent microwave-optical conversion based on frequency mixing in Rydberg atoms.
DOI
10.1364/cleo_qels.2016.fm4c.6

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Photons at microwave and optical frequencies are principal carriers for quantum information. While microwave photons can be effectively controlled at the local circuit level, optical photons can propagate over long distances. High-fidelity conversion between microwave and optical photons will allow the distribution of quantum states across different quantum technology nodes and enhance the scalability of hybrid quantum systems toward a future “Quantum Internet.” Despite a frequency difference of five orders of magnitude, there has been significant progress recently toward the transfer between microwave and optical photons with steadily improved efficiency in a coherent and bidirectional manner. In this review, we summarize this progress, emphasizing integrated device approaches, and provide a perspective for device implementation that enables quantum state transfer and entanglement distribution across microwave and optical domains.
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.
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