Researchers make headway in quantum information transfer

Tue, 09/24/2013 - 8:10am

Scanning electron micrograph of the device showing the mechanically suspended optomechanical crystal (blue) with electrodes (yellow) and the photonic circuit (red). Image: Joerg Bochmann & Amit Vainsencher, UCSBFiber optics has made communication faster than ever, but the next step involves a quantum leapliterally. In order to improve the security of the transfer of information, scientists are working on how to translate electrical quantum states to optical quantum states in a way that would enable ultrafast, quantum-encrypted communications.

A Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara) research team has demonstrated the first and arguably most challenging step in the process. The paper, published in Nature Physics, describes a nanomechanical transducer that provides strong and coherent coupling between microwave signals and optical photons. In other words, the transducer is an effective conduit for translating electrical signals (microwaves) into light (photons).


"There's this big effort going on in science now to construct computers and networks that work on the principles of quantum physics," says lead author Jörg Bochmann, a postdoctoral scholar in UCSB's Dept. of Physics. "And we have found that there actually is a way to translate electrical quantum states to optical quantum states."



According to the authors, their prototype transducer is fully compatible with superconducting quantum circuits and is well suited for cryogenic operation. "The coupled dynamics of the system should be the same at low temperatures as in our room temperature measurements, albeit with a lower thermal background," said co-author Andrew Cleland, a prof. of physics and assoc. dir. of the California Nanosystems Institute at UCSB. "Genuine quantum features and non-classical mechanical states will emerge when we couple a superconducting qubit to the transducer.


Source: Univ. of California, Santa Barbara


Share This Story

The password field is case sensitive.