Nanotechnology Now – Press Release: New experiment translating quantum information between technologies in a critical step for the quantum internet
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| A niobium superconducting cavity. The holes lead to tunnels that intersect to trap light and atoms. CREDITS Aishwarya Kumar |
Abstract:
Researchers have found a way to “translate” quantum information between different types of quantum technologies, with significant implications for quantum computing, communications, and networks.
New experiments translate quantum information between technologies in an important step for the quantum internet
Chicago, IL | Posted on March 24, 2023
The research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, was funded by the Army Research Office (ARO), Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and NSF’s Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architecture and Networks (HQAN), led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This is a new way to convert quantum information from the format used by quantum computers to the format required for quantum communication.
Photons—particles of light—are important to quantum information technology, but different technologies use them at different frequencies. For example, some of the most common quantum computing technologies are based on superconducting qubits, such as those used by technology giants Google and IBM; These qubits store quantum information in photons that travel at microwave frequencies.
But if you want to build quantum networks, or connect quantum computers, you can’t send microwave photons because their grip on quantum information is too weak to survive the journey.
“A lot of the technologies we use for classical communications—cell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS, and things like that—all use the microwave frequency of light,” said Aishwarya Kumar, postdoc at the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago and lead author. on the paper. “But you can’t do that for quantum communication because the quantum information you need is in a single photon. And at microwave frequencies, that information gets buried in thermal noise.”
The solution is to transfer the quantum information to high-frequency photons, called optical photons, which are much more resistant to ambient noise. But the information cannot be transferred directly from photon to photon; instead, we need intermediate materials. Some experimenters designed solid state devices for this purpose, but Kumar’s experiments were aimed at something more fundamental: atoms.
The electrons in an atom are only allowed to have certain amounts of energy, which are called energy levels. If an electron is in a lower energy level, it can be excited to a higher energy level by hitting it with a photon whose energy exactly matches the difference between the higher and lower levels. Similarly, when an electron is forced down to a lower energy level, the atom then emits a photon with an energy that matches the energy difference between the levels.
The rubidium atom happens to have two gaps in its level that Kumar’s technology exploits: one that exactly matches the energy of a microwave photon, and one that exactly matches that of an optical photon. By using a laser to shift the energy of an atom’s electrons up and down, this technology allows atoms to absorb microwave photons with quantum information and then emit optical photons with that quantum information. This translation between different modes of quantum information is called “transduction.”
The effective use of atoms for this purpose is made possible by the significant advances that scientists have made in manipulating such small objects. “We as a community have built incredible technologies in the last 20 or 30 years that allow us to control everything about atoms,” said Kumar. “So the experiment is very controlled and efficient.”
He says another secret to their success is field advances in cavity quantum electrodynamics, in which photons are trapped in a superconducting reflective space. Forcing photons to bounce in confined spaces, superconducting cavities amplify the interactions between the photons and whatever matter is placed within them.
Their room didn’t look particularly closed off—actually, it looked more like a block of Swiss cheese. But what look like holes are actually tunnels that intersect in very specific geometries, so that photons or atoms can become trapped at the intersections. It’s a clever design that also allows researchers access to the chamber so they can inject atoms and photons.
This technology works both ways: it can transfer quantum information from microwave photons to optical photons, and vice versa. So it could exist on either side of a remote connection between two superconducting qubit quantum computers, and serve as a fundamental building block for the quantum internet.
But Kumar argues there may be more applications for this technology than just quantum networks. Its core capability is to strongly entangle atoms and photons—a critical and difficult task in many different quantum technologies across the field.
“One of the things we’re really excited about is the ability of this platform to generate very efficient engagements,” he says. “Engagement is at the heart of almost everything quantum we care about, from computing to simulation to metrology and atomic clocks. I’m excited to see what else we can do.”
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