Quantum optical waveform conversion

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a nonlinear optical technique to compress and reshape quantum light pulses, preserving quantum entanglement, thereby enabling high-rate quantum communication over long distances.

Contribution

It introduces a method for quantum optical waveform conversion that significantly compresses and reshapes quantum pulses while maintaining their quantum properties.

Findings

Quantum pulse compression by over 100 times

Flexible waveform shaping of quantum light

Preservation of quantum entanglement during conversion

Abstract

Currently proposed architectures for long-distance quantum communication rely on networks of quantum processors connected by optical communications channels [1,2]. The key resource for such networks is the entanglement of matter-based quantum systems with quantum optical fields for information transmission. The optical interaction bandwidth of these material systems is a tiny fraction of that available for optical communication, and the temporal shape of the quantum optical output pulse is often poorly suited for long-distance transmission. Here we demonstrate that nonlinear mixing of a quantum light pulse with a spectrally tailored classical field can compress the quantum pulse by more than a factor of 100 and flexibly reshape its temporal waveform, while preserving all quantum properties, including entanglement. Waveform conversion can be used with heralded arrays of quantum light emitters to enable quantum communication at the full data rate of optical telecommunications.