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Quantum frequency conversion of photons with microsecond duration from the visible to the telecommunication C band

Sören Wengerowsky1,*,‡, Stefano Duranti1,‡, Lukas Heller1, and Hugues de Riedmatten1,2,†

  • *Contact author: soeren.wengerowsky@icfo.eu
  • †Contact author: hugues.deriedmatten@icfo.eu
  • ‡These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Phys. Rev. Applied 23, 024049 – Published 20 February, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.23.024049

Abstract

Quantum frequency conversion is a widely used technique to interface atomic systems with the telecom band in order to facilitate propagation over longer distances in fiber. Here, we demonstrate the difference-frequency conversion from 606 nm to 1552 nm of microsecond-long weak coherent pulses at the single-photon level compatible with Pr3+:Y2SiO5 quantum memories, with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We use a single-step difference-frequency-generation process with a continuous-wave pump at 994 nm in a periodically poled lithium niobate (MgO:ppLN) waveguide and ultranarrow spectral filtering down to a bandwidth of 12.5 MHz. With this setup, we achieve the conversion of weak coherent pulses of duration up to 13.6 µs with a device efficiency of about 25 % and an SNR >460 for 10-μs-long pulses containing one photon on average. This SNR is large enough to enable a high-fidelity conversion of qubits emitted from an emissive quantum memory based on Pr3+:Y2SiO5 and to realize an interface with quantum processing nodes based on narrow-linewidth cavity-enhanced trapped ions.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 23, 024049– Published 20 February, 2025
  • Received 28 October 2024
  • Revised 13 January 2025
  • Accepted 16 January 2025
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