A proof-of-principle demonstration of quantum microwave photonics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a quantum microwave photonics method using entangled photons and single-photon detection, achieving dispersion-resistant RF modulation and improved dynamic range for advanced communication applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum approach to microwave photonics that enhances dispersion resistance and RF signal quality compared to classical methods.

Findings

Nonlocal RF signal modulation with high dispersion resistance

Significant improvement in spurious-free dynamic range

Effective RF signal distillation from dispersion effects

Abstract

With the rapid development of microwave photonics, which has expanded to numerous applications of commercial importance, eliminating the emerging bottlenecks becomes of vital importance. For example, as the main branch of microwave photonics, radio-over-fiber technology provides high bandwidth, low-loss, and long-distance propagation capability, facilitating wide applications ranging from telecommunication to wireless networks. With ultrashort pulses as the optical carrier, huge capacity is further endowed. However, the wide bandwidth of ultrashort pulses results in the severe vulnerability of high-frequency RF signals to fiber dispersion. With a time-energy entangled biphoton source as the optical carrier and combined with the single-photon detection technique, a quantum microwave photonics method is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The results show that it not only realizes unprecedented nonlocal RF signal modulation with strong resistance to the dispersion associated with ultrashort pulse carriers but provides an alternative mechanism to effectively distill the RF signal out from the dispersion. Furthermore, the spurious-free dynamic range of both the nonlocally modulated and distilled RF signals has been significantly improved. With the ultra-weak detection and high-speed processing advantages endowed by the low-timing-jitter single-photon detection, the quantum microwave photonics method opens up new possibilities in modern communication and networks.