Bidirectional and efficient conversion between microwave and optical light

Understand

Converting low-frequency electrical signals into much higher frequency optical signals has enabled modern communications networks to leverage both the strengths of microfabricated electrical circuits and optical fiber transmission, allowing information networks to grow in size and complexity.

• A microwave-to-optical converter in a quantum information network could provide similar gains by linking quantum processors via low-loss optical fibers and enabling a large-scale quantum network.
• However, no current technology can convert low-frequency microwave signals into high-frequency optical signals while preserving their fragile quantum state.
• For this demanding application, a converter must provide a near-unitary transformation between different frequencies; that is, the ideal transformation is reversible, coherent, and lossless.