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arXiv · 1904.08999

Microwave-to-optical conversion via four-wave-mixing in a cold ytterbium ensemble

Jacob P. Covey·Alp Sipahigil·Mark Saffman
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Abstract

Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons requires noise-free microwave-to-optical transducers, a technology currently not realized at the single-photon level. We propose to use four-wave-mixing in an ensemble of cold ytterbium (Yb) atoms prepared in the metastable 'clock' state. The parametric process uses two high-lying Rydberg states for bidirectional conversion between a 10 GHz microwave photon and an optical photon in the telecommunication E-band. To avoid noise photons due to spontaneous emission, we consider continuous operation far detuned from the intermediate states. We use an input-output formalism to predict conversion efficiencies of $\approx50\%$ with bandwidths of $\approx100$ kHz.

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Jacob P. Covey, Alp Sipahigil, Mark Saffman. 2019-04-18. Microwave-to-optical conversion via four-wave-mixing in a cold ytterbium ensemble. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.100.012307

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