04684nas a2200145 4500008004100000245004500041210004500086260001500131520426900146100001804415700002304433700002604456700001904482856003704501 2016 eng d00aFigures of merit for quantum transducers0 aFigures of merit for quantum transducers c2016/10/043 a

Recent technical advances have sparked renewed interest in physical systems that couple simultaneously to different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus enabling transduction of signals between vastly different frequencies at the level of single photons. Such hybrid systems have demonstrated frequency conversion of classical signals and have the potential of enabling quantum state transfer, e.g., between superconducting circuits and traveling optical signals. This Letter describes a simple approach for the theoretical characterization of performance for quantum transducers. Given that, in practice, one cannot attain ideal one-to-one quantum conversion, we will explore how well the transducer performs in various scenarios ranging from classical signal detection to applications for quantum information processing. While the performance of the transducer depends on the particular application in which it enters, we show that the performance can be characterized by defining two simple parameters: the signal transfer efficiency η and the added noise N.

1 aZeuthen, Emil1 aSchliesser, Albert1 aSørensen, Anders, S.1 aTaylor, J., M. uhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1610.01099