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An integrated microwave-to-optics interface for scalable quantum computing

M. Weaver, P. Duivestein, A. C. Bernasconi, Selim Scharmer, M. Lemang, T. V. van Thiel, F. Hijazi, B. Hensen et al.

Nature Nanotechnology, 2022

100 citations

Abstract

Microwave-to-optics transduction is emerging as a vital technology for scaling quantum computers and quantum networks. To establish useful entanglement links between qubit processing units, several key conditions must be simultaneously met: the transducer must add less than a single quantum of input-referred noise and operate with high efficiency, as well as large bandwidth and high repetition rate. Here we present a design for an integrated transducer based on a planar superconducting resonator coupled to a silicon photonic cavity through a mechanical oscillator made of lithium niobate on silicon. We experimentally demonstrate its performance with a transduction efficiency of 0.9% with 1 μW of continuous optical power and a spectral bandwidth of 14.8 MHz. With short optical pulses, we measure the added noise that is limited to a few photons, with a repetition rate of up to 100 kHz. Our device directly couples to a 50 Ω transmission line and can be scaled to a large number of transducers on a single chip, laying the foundations for distributed quantum computing. An integrated transducer based on a planar superconducting resonator coupled to a silicon photonic cavity through a mechanical oscillator made from lithium niobate achieves a transduction efficiency of 0.9%.

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