A silicon-organic hybrid platform for quantum microwave-to-optical transduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a silicon-organic hybrid platform for microwave-to-optical photon conversion, crucial for quantum networks, demonstrating high-quality resonators, a 330 Hz coupling rate, and initial improvements for enhanced performance.

Contribution

The work presents a novel silicon-organic hybrid device enabling microwave-to-optical transduction with high quality factors and initial steps toward increased coupling efficiency.

Findings

Achieved microwave-to-optical conversion from 6.7 GHz to 193 THz.

Demonstrated a 330 Hz electro-optic coupling rate.

Identified stray light effects and proposed mitigation strategies.

Abstract

Low-loss fiber optic links have the potential to connect superconducting quantum processors together over long distances to form large scale quantum networks. A key component of these future networks is a quantum transducer that coherently and bidirectionally converts photons from microwave frequencies to optical frequencies. We present a platform for electro-optic photon conversion based on silicon-organic hybrid photonics. Our device combines high quality factor microwave and optical resonators with an electro-optic polymer cladding to perform microwave-to-optical photon conversion from 6.7 GHz to 193 THz (1558 nm). The device achieves an electro-optic coupling rate of 330 Hz in a millikelvin dilution refrigerator environment. We use an optical heterodyne measurement technique to demonstrate the single-sideband nature of the conversion with a selectivity of approximately 10 dB. We analyze the effects of stray light in our device and suggest ways in which this can be mitigated. Finally, we present initial results on high-impedance spiral resonators designed to increase the electro-optic coupling.