Pump Free Microwave-Optical Quantum Transduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a pump-free quantum transduction scheme using color centers to generate microwave-optical Bell pairs, avoiding device heating issues and achieving high fidelity and heralding rates for distributed quantum computing.

Contribution

It proposes a novel pump-free method for microwave-optical transduction using color centers, enhancing efficiency and fidelity in quantum communication.

Findings

Heralding rate exceeds 1 kHz with near-unity fidelity.

Pump-free scheme avoids device heating issues.

Simulation confirms high-quality Bell pair generation.

Abstract

Distributed quantum computing involves superconducting computation nodes operating at microwave frequencies, which are connected by long-distance transmission lines that transmit photons at optical frequencies. Quantum transduction, which coherently converts between microwave and optical (M-O) photons, is a critical component of such an architecture. Current approaches are hindered by the unavoidable problem of device heating due to the optical pump. In this work, we propose a pump-free scheme based on color centers that generates time-bin encoded M-O Bell pairs. Our scheme first creates spin-photon entanglement and then converts the spin state into a time-bin-encoded microwave photon using a strongly coupled Purcell-enhanced resonator. In our protocol, the microwave retrieval is heralded by detecting the microwave signal with a three-level transmon. We have analyzed the resulting Bell state fidelity and generation probability of this protocol. Our simulation shows that by combining a state-of-the-art spin-optical interface with our proposed strongly-coupled spin-microwave design, the pump-free scheme can generate M-O Bell pairs at a heralding rate exceeding one kilohertz with near-unity fidelity, which establishes the scheme as a promising source for M-O Bell pairs.