Microwave-to-optical transduction with erbium ions coupled to planar photonic and superconducting resonators

Optical quantum networks can connect distant quantum processors to enable secure quantum communication and distributed quantum computing. Superconducting qubits are a leading technology for quantum information processing but cannot couple to long-distance optical networks without an efficient, coherent, and low noise interface between microwave and optical photons. Here, we demonstrate a microwave-to-optical transducer using an ensemble of erbium ions that is simultaneously coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator and a nanophotonic optical resonator. The coherent atomic transitions of the ions mediate the frequency conversion from microwave photons to optical photons and using photon counting we observed device conversion efficiency approaching 10(−7). With pulsed operation at a low duty cycle, the device maintained a spin temperature below 100 mK and microwave resonator heating of less than 0.15 quanta.