All-Dielectric Resonant Cavity Electro-Optic Transduction Between Microwave and Telecom

Abstract

We present a resonant electro-optic transducer for efficient conversion between microwave and telecom wavelength photons. Our platform employs a bulk lithium niobate crystal whose large dielectric constant creates wavelength-scale confinement of microwave photons. By incorporating this crystal within a high-finesse Fabry - Perot optical cavity, microwave photons couple to optical photons through the electro-optic effect. We demonstrate the ability to tune our system into triply resonant operation, where microwave photons, optical pump photons, and upconverted optical photons are simultaneously resonant with high quality factor electromagnetic modes of the system. The device achieves photon number conversion efficiency at the percent level, comparable to state-of-the-art devices at room temperature -- sufficient to resolve the thermal occupation of the microwave mode -- while avoiding the noise and loss associated with metal electrodes. These results establish our all-dielectric devices as a promising platform for high-precision sensing of optically detected microwave fields and as a viable route toward single-photon-level microwave - optical quantum transduction.