No Arabic abstract
Practical quantum networks require low-loss and noise-resilient optical interconnects as well as non-Gaussian resources for entanglement distillation and distributed quantum computation. The latter could be provided by superconducting circuits but - despite growing efforts and rapid progress - existing solutions to interface the microwave and optical domains lack either scalability or efficiency, and in most cases the conversion noise is not known. In this work we utilize the unique opportunities of silicon photonics, cavity optomechanics and superconducting circuits to demonstrate a fully integrated, coherent transducer connecting the microwave X and the telecom S bands with a total (internal) bidirectional transduction efficiency of 1.2% (135 %) at millikelvin temperatures. The coupling relies solely on the radiation pressure interaction mediated by the femtometer-scale motion of two silicon nanobeams and includes an optomechanical gain of about 20 dB. The chip-scale device is fabricated from CMOS compatible materials and achieves a V$_pi$ as low as 16 $mu$V for sub-nanowatt pump powers. Such power-efficient, ultra-sensitive and highly integrated hybrid interconnects might find applications ranging from quantum communication and RF receivers to magnetic resonance imaging.
We study a parametrically-driven nanomechanical resonator capacitively coupled to a microwave cavity. If the nanoresonator can be cooled to near its quantum ground state then quantum squeezing of a quadrature of the nanoresonator motion becomes feasible. We consider the adiabatic limit in which the cavity mode is slaved to the nanoresonator mode. By driving the cavity on its red-detuned sideband, the squeezing can be coupled into the microwave field at the cavity resonance. The red-detuned sideband drive is also compatible with the goal of ground state cooling. Squeezing of the output microwave field may be inferred using a technique similar to that used to infer squeezing of the field produced by a Josephson parametric amplifier, and subsequently, squeezing of the nanoresonator motion may be inferred. We have calculated the output field microwave squeezing spectra and related this to squeezing of the nanoresonator motion, both at zero and finite temperature. Driving the cavity on the blue-detuned sideband, and on both the blue and red sidebands, have also been considered within the same formalism.
Long-distance entanglement distribution is a vital capability for quantum technologies. An outstanding practical milestone towards this aim is the identification of a suitable matter-photon interface which possesses, simultaneously, long coherence lifetimes and efficient telecommunications-band optical access. In this work, alongside its sister publication, we report upon the T center, a silicon defect with spin-selective optical transitions at 1326 nm in the telecommunications O-band. Here we show that the T center in $^{28}$Si offers electron and nuclear spin lifetimes beyond a millisecond and second respectively, as well as optical lifetimes of 0.94(1) $mu$s and a Debye-Waller factor of 0.23(1). This work represents a significant step towards coherent photonic interconnects between long-lived silicon spins, spin-entangled telecom single-photon emitters, and spin-dependent silicon-integrated photonic nonlinearities for future global quantum technologies.
Heralding techniques are useful in quantum communication to circumvent losses without resorting to error correction schemes or quantum repeaters. Such techniques are realized, for example, by monitoring for photon loss at the receiving end of the quantum link while not disturbing the transmitted quantum state. We describe and experimentally benchmark a scheme that incorporates error detection in a quantum channel connecting two transmon qubits using traveling microwave photons. This is achieved by encoding the quantum information as a time-bin superposition of a single photon, which simultaneously realizes high communication rates and high fidelities. The presented scheme is straightforward to implement in circuit QED and is fully microwave-controlled, making it an interesting candidate for future modular quantum computing architectures.
On-demand indistinguishable single photon sources are essential for quantum networking and communication. Semiconductor quantum dots are among the most promising candidates, but their typical emission wavelength renders them unsuitable for use in fibre networks. Here, we present quantum frequency conversion of near-infrared photons from a bright quantum dot to the telecommunication C-band, allowing integration with existing fibre architectures. We use a custom-built, tunable 2400 nm seed laser to convert single photons from 942 nm to 1550 nm in a difference frequency generation process. We achieve an end-to-end conversion efficiency of $sim$35%, demonstrate count rates approaching 1 MHz at 1550 nm with $g^{left(2right)}left(0right) = 0.04$, and achieve Hong-Ou-Mandel visibilities of 60%. We expect this scheme to be preferable to quantum dot sources directly emitting at telecom wavelengths for fibre based quantum networking.
A localized qubit entangled with a propagating quantum field is well suited to study non-local aspects of quantum mechanics and may also provide a channel to communicate between spatially separated nodes in a quantum network. Here, we report the on demand generation and characterization of Bell-type entangled states between a superconducting qubit and propagating microwave fields composed of zero, one and two-photon Fock states. Using low noise linear amplification and efficient data acquisition we extract all relevant correlations between the qubit and the photon states and demonstrate entanglement with high fidelity.