Enhancement of Microwave to Optical Spin-Based Quantum Transduction via a Magnon Mode

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel spin-based quantum transduction method that significantly increases microwave-to-optical conversion rates using magnetic impurities, enabling faster and more flexible quantum communication systems.

Contribution

It presents a new hybrid system leveraging spinful impurities for microwave to optical transduction with higher rates and broader operational parameters than existing methods.

Findings

Achieves transduction rates 1000 times faster than previous devices.

Operates effectively over a 1 GHz microwave detuning range.

Does not require mode volume matching between optical and microwave resonators.

Abstract

We propose a new method for converting single microwave photons to single optical sideband photons based on spinful impurities in magnetic materials. This hybrid system is advantageous over previous proposals because (i) the implementation allows much higher transduction rates ($10^{3}$ times faster at the same optical pump Rabi frequency) than state-of the art devices, (ii) high-efficiency transduction is found to happen in a significantly larger space of device parameters (in particular, over $1$ GHz microwave detuning), and (iii) it does not require mode volume matching between optical and microwave resonators. We identify the needed magnetic interactions as well as potential materials systems to enable this speed-up using erbium dopants for telecom compatibility. This is an important step towards realizing high-fidelity entangling operations between remote qubits and will provide additional control of the transduction through perturbation of the magnet.