TY - JOUR AB - Practical quantum networks require low-loss and noise-resilient optical interconnects as well as non-Gaussian resources for entanglement distillation and distributed quantum computation. The latter could be provided by superconducting circuits but existing solutions to interface the microwave and optical domains lack either scalability or efficiency, and in most cases the conversion noise is not known. In this work we utilize the unique opportunities of silicon photonics, cavity optomechanics and superconducting circuits to demonstrate a fully integrated, coherent transducer interfacing the microwave X and the telecom S bands with a total (internal) bidirectional transduction efficiency of 1.2% (135%) at millikelvin temperatures. The coupling relies solely on the radiation pressure interaction mediated by the femtometer-scale motion of two silicon nanobeams reaching a Vπ as low as 16 μV for sub-nanowatt pump powers. Without the associated optomechanical gain, we achieve a total (internal) pure conversion efficiency of up to 0.019% (1.6%), relevant for future noise-free operation on this qubit-compatible platform. AU - Arnold, Georg M AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Barzanjeh, Shabir AU - Redchenko, Elena AU - Rueda Sanchez, Alfredo R AU - Hease, William J AU - Hassani, Farid AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 8529 JF - Nature Communications KW - General Biochemistry KW - Genetics and Molecular Biology KW - General Physics and Astronomy KW - General Chemistry SN - 2041-1723 TI - Converting microwave and telecom photons with a silicon photonic nanomechanical interface VL - 11 ER - TY - GEN AB - This datasets comprises all data shown in plots of the submitted article "Converting microwave and telecom photons with a silicon photonic nanomechanical interface". Additional raw data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. AU - Arnold, Georg M AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Barzanjeh, Shabir AU - Redchenko, Elena AU - Rueda Sanchez, Alfredo R AU - Hease, William J AU - Hassani, Farid AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 13056 TI - Converting microwave and telecom photons with a silicon photonic nanomechanical interface ER - TY - JOUR AB - Microwave photonics lends the advantages of fiber optics to electronic sensing and communication systems. In contrast to nonlinear optics, electro-optic devices so far require classical modulation fields whose variance is dominated by electronic or thermal noise rather than quantum fluctuations. Here we demonstrate bidirectional single-sideband conversion of X band microwave to C band telecom light with a microwave mode occupancy as low as 0.025 ± 0.005 and an added output noise of less than or equal to 0.074 photons. This is facilitated by radiative cooling and a triply resonant ultra-low-loss transducer operating at millikelvin temperatures. The high bandwidth of 10.7 MHz and total (internal) photon conversion efficiency of 0.03% (0.67%) combined with the extremely slow heating rate of 1.1 added output noise photons per second for the highest available pump power of 1.48 mW puts near-unity efficiency pulsed quantum transduction within reach. Together with the non-Gaussian resources of superconducting qubits this might provide the practical foundation to extend the range and scope of current quantum networks in analogy to electrical repeaters in classical fiber optic communication. AU - Hease, William J AU - Rueda Sanchez, Alfredo R AU - Sahu, Rishabh AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Arnold, Georg M AU - Schwefel, Harald G.L. AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 9114 IS - 2 JF - PRX Quantum SN - 2691-3399 TI - Bidirectional electro-optic wavelength conversion in the quantum ground state VL - 1 ER - TY - GEN AB - This dataset comprises all data shown in the plots of the main part of the submitted article "Bidirectional Electro-Optic Wavelength Conversion in the Quantum Ground State". Additional raw data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. AU - Hease, William J AU - Rueda Sanchez, Alfredo R AU - Sahu, Rishabh AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Arnold, Georg M AU - Schwefel, Harald AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 13071 TI - Bidirectional electro-optic wavelength conversion in the quantum ground state ER - TY - JOUR AB - Light is a union of electric and magnetic fields, and nowhere is the complex relationship between these fields more evident than in the near fields of nanophotonic structures. There, complicated electric and magnetic fields varying over subwavelength scales are generally present, which results in photonic phenomena such as extraordinary optical momentum, superchiral fields, and a complex spatial evolution of optical singularities. An understanding of such phenomena requires nanoscale measurements of the complete optical field vector. Although the sensitivity of near- field scanning optical microscopy to the complete electromagnetic field was recently demonstrated, a separation of different components required a priori knowledge of the sample. Here, we introduce a robust algorithm that can disentangle all six electric and magnetic field components from a single near-field measurement without any numerical modeling of the structure. As examples, we unravel the fields of two prototypical nanophotonic structures: a photonic crystal waveguide and a plasmonic nanowire. These results pave the way for new studies of complex photonic phenomena at the nanoscale and for the design of structures that optimize their optical behavior. AU - Le Feber, B. AU - Sipe, J. E. AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Kuipers, L. AU - Rotenberg, N. ID - 6102 IS - 1 JF - Light: Science and Applications SN - 20955545 TI - A full vectorial mapping of nanophotonic light fields VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Mechanical systems facilitate the development of a hybrid quantum technology comprising electrical, optical, atomic and acoustic degrees of freedom1, and entanglement is essential to realize quantum-enabled devices. Continuous-variable entangled fields—known as Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) states—are spatially separated two-mode squeezed states that can be used for quantum teleportation and quantum communication2. In the optical domain, EPR states are typically generated using nondegenerate optical amplifiers3, and at microwave frequencies Josephson circuits can serve as a nonlinear medium4,5,6. An outstanding goal is to deterministically generate and distribute entangled states with a mechanical oscillator, which requires a carefully arranged balance between excitation, cooling and dissipation in an ultralow noise environment. Here we observe stationary emission of path-entangled microwave radiation from a parametrically driven 30-micrometre-long silicon nanostring oscillator, squeezing the joint field operators of two thermal modes by 3.40 decibels below the vacuum level. The motion of this micromechanical system correlates up to 50 photons per second per hertz, giving rise to a quantum discord that is robust with respect to microwave noise7. Such generalized quantum correlations of separable states are important for quantum-enhanced detection8 and provide direct evidence of the non-classical nature of the mechanical oscillator without directly measuring its state9. This noninvasive measurement scheme allows to infer information about otherwise inaccessible objects, with potential implications for sensing, open-system dynamics and fundamental tests of quantum gravity. In the future, similar on-chip devices could be used to entangle subsystems on very different energy scales, such as microwave and optical photons. AU - Barzanjeh, Shabir AU - Redchenko, Elena AU - Peruzzo, Matilda AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Lewis, Dylan AU - Arnold, Georg M AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 6609 JF - Nature TI - Stationary entangled radiation from micromechanical motion VL - 570 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Nonreciprocal circuit elements form an integral part of modern measurement and communication systems. Mathematically they require breaking of time-reversal symmetry, typically achieved using magnetic materials and more recently using the quantum Hall effect, parametric permittivity modulation or Josephson nonlinearities. Here we demonstrate an on-chip magnetic-free circulator based on reservoir-engineered electromechanic interactions. Directional circulation is achieved with controlled phase-sensitive interference of six distinct electro-mechanical signal conversion paths. The presented circulator is compact, its silicon-on-insulator platform is compatible with both superconducting qubits and silicon photonics, and its noise performance is close to the quantum limit. With a high dynamic range, a tunable bandwidth of up to 30 MHz and an in situ reconfigurability as beam splitter or wavelength converter, it could pave the way for superconducting qubit processors with multiplexed on-chip signal processing and readout. AU - Barzanjeh, Shabir AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Peruzzo, Matilda AU - Kalaee, Mahmoud AU - Dieterle, Paul AU - Painter, Oskar AU - Fink, Johannes M ID - 798 IS - 1 JF - Nature Communications SN - 20411723 TI - Mechanical on chip microwave circulator VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Near-field imaging is a powerful tool to investigate the complex structure of light at the nanoscale. Recent advances in near-field imaging have indicated the possibility for the complete reconstruction of both electric and magnetic components of the evanescent field. Here we study the electro-magnetic field structure of surface plasmon polariton waves propagating along subwavelength gold nanowires by performing phase- and polarization-resolved near-field microscopy in collection mode. By applying the optical reciprocity theorem, we describe the signal collected by the probe as an overlap integral of the nanowire's evanescent field and the probe's response function. As a result, we find that the probe's sensitivity to the magnetic field is approximately equal to its sensitivity to the electric field. Through rigorous modeling of the nanowire mode as well as the aperture probe response function, we obtain a good agreement between experimentally measured signals and a numerical model. Our findings provide a better understanding of aperture-based near-field imaging of the nanoscopic plasmonic and photonic structures and are helpful for the interpretation of future near-field experiments. AU - Kabakova, Irina AU - De Hoogh, Anouk AU - Van Der Wel, Ruben AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Le Feber, Boris AU - Kuipers, Laurens ID - 1246 JF - Scientific Reports TI - Imaging of electric and magnetic fields near plasmonic nanowires VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Solitons are localized waves formed by a balance of focusing and defocusing effects. These nonlinear waves exist in diverse forms of matter yet exhibit similar properties including stability, periodic recurrence and particle-like trajectories. One important property is soliton fission, a process by which an energetic higher-order soliton breaks apart due to dispersive or nonlinear perturbations. Here we demonstrate through both experiment and theory that nonlinear photocarrier generation can induce soliton fission. Using near-field measurements, we directly observe the nonlinear spatial and temporal evolution of optical pulses in situ in a nanophotonic semiconductor waveguide. We develop an analytic formalism describing the free-carrier dispersion (FCD) perturbation and show the experiment exceeds the minimum threshold by an order of magnitude. We confirm these observations with a numerical nonlinear Schrödinger equation model. These results provide a fundamental explanation and physical scaling of optical pulse evolution in free-carrier media and could enable improved supercontinuum sources in gas based and integrated semiconductor waveguides. AU - Husko, Chad AU - Wulf, Matthias AU - Lefrançois, Simon AU - Combrié, Sylvain AU - Lehoucq, Gaëlle AU - De Rossi, Alfredo AU - Eggleton, Benjamin AU - Kuipers, Laurens ID - 1429 JF - Nature Communications TI - Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides VL - 7 ER -