Principles for Optimizing Quantum Transduction in Piezo-Optomechanical Systems

Two-way microwave-optical quantum transduction is an essential capability to connect distant superconducting qubits via optical fiber, and to enable quantum networking at a large scale. In Blésin, Tian, Bhave, and Kippenberg's article, “Quantum coherent microwave-optical transduction using high overtone bulk acoustic resonances" (Phys. Rev. A, 104, 052601 (2021)), they lay out a quantum transduction system that accomplishes this by combining a piezoelectric interaction to convert microwave photons to GHz-scale phonons, and an optomechanical interaction to up-convert those phonons into telecom-band photons using a pump laser set to an adjacent telecom-band tone. In this work, we discuss these coupling interactions from first principles in order to discover what device parameters matter most in determining the transduction efficiency of this new platform, and to discuss strategies toward system optimization for near-unity transduction efficiency, as well as how noise impacts the transduction process. In addition, we address the post-transduction challenge of separating single photons of the transduced light from a classically bright pump only a few GHz away in frequency by proposing a novel optomechanical coupling mechanism using phonon-photon four-wave mixing via stress-induced optical nonlinearity and its thermodynamic connection to higher-orders of electrostriction. Where this process drives transduction by consuming pairs instead of individual pump photons, it will allow a clean separation of the transduced light from the classically bright pump driving the transduction process.