Entanglement is a genuine quantum mechanical property and the key resource in currently developed quantum technologies. Sharing this fragile property between superconducting microwavecircuits and optical or atomic systems would enable new functionalities but has been hindered by the tremendous energy mismatch of ∼105 and the resulting mutually imposed loss and noise. In this work we create and verify entanglement between microwave and optical fields in a millikelvin environment. Using an optically pulsed superconducting electro-optical device, we deterministically prepare an itinerant microwave-optical state that is squeezed by 0.72+0.31−0.25\,dB and violates the Duan-Simon separability criterion by >5 standard deviations. This establishes the long-sought non-classical correlations between superconducting circuits and telecom wavelength light with wide-ranging implications for hybrid quantum networks in the context of modularization, scaling, sensing and cross-platform verification.
Recent quantum technology advances have established precise quantum control of various microscopic systems involving optical, microwave, spin, and mechanical degrees of freedom. Itis a timely challenge to realize hybrid quantum devices that leverage the full potential of each component. Interfaces based on cryogenic cavity electro-optic systems are particularly promising, due to the direct interaction between microwave and optical fields in the quantum regime. However, low coupling rates and excess back-action from the pump laser have precluded quantum optical control of superconducting circuits. Here we report the coherent control of a microwave cavity mode using laser light in a multimode device at millikelvin temperature with near unity cooperativity, as manifested by the observation of electro-optically induced transparency and absorption due to the electro-optical dynamical back-action. We show that both the stationary and instantaneous pulsed response of the microwave and optical modes comply with the coherent electro-optical interaction and reveal only minuscule amount of excess back-action with an unanticipated time delay. Our demonstration represents a key step to attain full quantum control of microwave circuits using laser light, with possible applications ranging from optical quantum non-demolition measurements of microwave fields beyond the standard quantum limit, optical microwave ground state cooling and squeezing, to quantum transduction, entanglement generation and hybrid quantum networks.
Encoding information onto optical fields is the backbone of modern telecommunication networks. Optical fibers offer low loss transport and vast bandwidth compared to electrical cables,and are currently also replacing copper cables for short-range communications. Optical fibers also exhibit significantly lower thermal conductivity, making optical interconnects attractive for interfacing with superconducting circuits and devices. Yet little is known about modulation at cryogenic temperatures. Here we demonstrate a proof-of-principle experiment, showing that currently employed Ti-doped LiNbO modulators maintain the Pockels coefficient at 3K—a base temperature for classical microwave amplifier circuitry. We realize electro-optical read-out of a superconducting electromechanical circuit to perform both coherent spectroscopy, measuring optomechanically-induced transparency, and incoherent thermometry, encoding the thermomechanical sidebands in an optical signal. Although the achieved noise figures are high, approaches that match the lower-bandwidth microwave signals, use integrated devices or materials with higher EO coefficient, should achieve added noise similar to current HEMT amplifiers, providing a route to parallel readout for emerging quantum or classical computing platforms.