The feasibility of Microwave-to-Optical Photon Efficient

ConversionBy Omar Alshehri

Waterloo, ON

Fall 2014

oalshehri@ksu.edu.sa

Outlines

• The device mechanism.

• Applications (potential).

• Advantages.

• Limitations.

• Improvements.

• The grand device!

Advantages of both Regimes separately

MW photon

Optical photon

Linking quantum processors through low-loss optical fiber.

Long-lived quantum-compatible storage [3,4].

Low-loss transmission [2].

Can be easily distributed [1].

Can be easily manipulated [1]

Advantages of converting

• Strengthens optical fiber transmission.

• Enables quantum systems to grow in bigger,more complex networks [5,6].

• Linking quantum processors through low-lossoptical fiber.

MW easily manipulated photon

Optical easily distributed photon

Limitations

• The efficiency might be greater that unity which means that noise was added to the signal [1].

Previous potential conversion technology

• The only know potential device is the electro-optics modulators which is expected to act as converters [7-9].

• However, some models have predicted photon number efficiencies of only few 10-4 [10,11,8].

Mechanisms of potential devices

• The photon must enter a nonlinear medium before it can be converted [itself].

• Proposed nonlinear intermediate mediums:

1- Clouds of ultracold atoms [12,13].

2- Ensembles of spins [14,15].

3- Nanomechanical resonators [16-18].

Current technology: nanomechanical resonator• Both MW and optical lights have been used for cooling mechanical

resonators to its ground state of motion [19,20].

• Utilizing this common ground will enable combining optomechanics (optical photon related) and electromechanics (MW photon related).

• This combination is by simultaneously a mech. Resonator to both MW circuit and optical cavity [1].

• The resonator components are as follows:

Current technology: nanomechanical resonator (cont.)• The device is composed of one mechanical resonator and two

electromagnetic resonators: one optical and one MW.

• The optical resonator = Fabry-Perot cavity @ 282 THz .

• The MW resonator = LC circuit @ 7 GHz.

• The mechanical resonator system: LC circuit substrate + niobium coated membrane + the gap sandwiched between both of them.

Ref [1]

0- Maintain the cryogenics.

1- Inject a MW or optical field.

2- Measure the transmitted signals (seems random).

Current technology: nanomechanical resonator• The best device fabricated today by Andrews et al [1] has conversion

efficiency of 10%. This is the challenging part: integrating optical light with cryogenic temperatures.

• The cryogenics is needed for having 1- low noise, and 2- superconductivity.

• The ideal device should be 1- Coherent, 2- Lossless, and 3- Noiseless.

Future Improvements

• No technology nowadays can convert MW signal (low frequency) to optical (high frequency) while preserving the MW signal’s fragile quantum state [1].

• The 10% efficiency device can improve in efficiency as proposed by [1] by precooling the device further lower than 4 K below 40 mK.

• This is the challenging part: integrating optical light with cryogenic temperatures.

• The cryogenics is needed for having 1- low noise, and 2- superconductivity.

• The ideal device should be 1- Coherent, 2- Lossless, and 3- Noiseless.

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microwave and optical light. Nature Phys. 2911, 321–326 (2014).

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