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Non-classical microwave–optical photon pair generation with a chip-scale transducer

Nature Physics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Modern computing and communication technologies such as supercomputers and the Internet are based on optically connected networks of microwave-frequency information processors. An analogous architecture has been proposed for quantum networks, using optical photons to distribute entanglement between remote superconducting quantum processors. Here we report a step towards such a network by observing non-classical correlations between photons in an optical link and a superconducting quantum device. We generate these states of light through a spontaneous parametric down-conversion process in a chip-scale piezo-optomechanical transducer, and we measure a microwave–optical cross-correlation exceeding the Cauchy–Schwarz classical bound for thermal states. As further evidence of the non-classical character of the microwave–optical photon pairs, we observe antibunching in the microwave state conditioned on detection of an optical photon. Such a transducer can be readily connected to an independent superconducting qubit module and serve as a key building block for optical quantum networks of microwave-frequency qubits.

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Fig. 1: Quantum transducer.
Fig. 2: Optical and microwave spectroscopy.
Fig. 3: Transducer noise characterization.
Fig. 4: Microwave–optical cross-correlations.

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Data availability

Data shown in the main text and Supplementary Information are available on Zenodo50. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Mirhosseini, M. Kalaee, A. Sipahigil and J. Banker for contributions in the early stages of this work, E. Kim, A. Butler, G. Kim, S. Sonar, U. Hatipoglu and J. Rochman for helpful discussions and B. Baker and M. McCoy for experimental support. We thank MIT Lincoln Laboratories for providing the travelling-wave parametric amplifier used in the microwave readout chain in our experimental set-up. NbN deposition during the fabrication process was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This work was supported by the ARO/LPS Cross Quantum Technology Systems program (grant W911NF-18-1-0103), the US Department of Energy Office of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers (Q-NEXT, award DE-AC02-06CH11357), the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM) and the NSF Physics Frontiers Center (grant PHY-1125565) with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech and the AWS Center for Quantum Computing. L.J. acknowledges support from the AFRL (FA8649-21-P-0781), NSF (ERC-1941583, OMA-2137642) and the Packard Foundation (2020-71479). S.M. acknowledges support from the IQIM Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Changchun Zhong

    Present address: Department of Physics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

  2. These authors contributed equally: Srujan Meesala, Steven Wood, David Lake.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kavli Nanoscience Institute and Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Srujan Meesala, Steven Wood, David Lake, Piero Chiappina & Oskar Painter

  2. Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Srujan Meesala, Steven Wood, David Lake, Piero Chiappina & Oskar Painter

  3. Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Changchun Zhong & Liang Jiang

  4. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Andrew D. Beyer & Matthew D. Shaw

  5. Center for Quantum Computing, Amazon Web Services, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Oskar Painter

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Contributions

S.M., S.W., D.L. and O.P. came up with the concept, S.M., S.W. and D.L. planned the experiment. S.M., S.W., D.L. and P.C. designed the device. S.M. and S.W. performed device fabrication with help from A.D.B. and M.D.S. for NbN deposition. M.D.S. provided the single photon detector used in the experiments. S.M., S.W. and D.L. performed the measurements and analysed the data. S.M., D.L., C.Z. and L.J. developed the theoretical model. O.P. supervised the project. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oskar Painter.

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Competing interests

O.P. is currently employed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as Director of their quantum hardware program. AWS provided partial funding support for this work through a sponsored research grant.

Peer review

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Nature Physics thanks Rishabh Sahu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–17, Figs. 1–13, Tables 1–5 and References.

Supplementary Data

Source data for supplementary figures.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Transducer spectroscopy data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Transducer noise characterization data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Microwave–optical cross-correlations data.

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Meesala, S., Wood, S., Lake, D. et al. Non-classical microwave–optical photon pair generation with a chip-scale transducer. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02409-z

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