--- OA_place: publisher _id: '21863' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Atoms and photons, two things so different but yet so alike. The former, the building block of matter, something we learn about in school and imagine it as some tiny marbles encircled by other tinier marbles. The latter, an electromagnetic wave, a light particle or an excitation of the electromagnetic field. Quantum mechanics tells us about the properties of these two entities. And even if it sounds, looks and writes counter-intuitive, it has proven right for over a century now.\r\n\r\nIn this work, I elaborate on how we tested the laws of quantum mechanics and how we used them learn more about the tiny building blocks of nature and the fields they use to talk to each other. The atoms we use, are artificial. Superconducting qubits, small electrical circuits with quantized energy levels behave like electrons that transition between different orbitals in an atom. One of the qubits' advantages, is also a big disadvantage. We design the circuits' energy levels and fabricate them in a cleanroom. This allows for arbitrary spaced energy levels but in contrast to real atoms, prevents two superconducting qubits from being alike. Still, this qubit platform is one of the frontrunners for future quantum computing technology and testing fundamental physics due to their scalability.\r\n\r\nWe interface superconducting qubits, which operate in the GHz regime, with microwave photons. We use 3D aluminum cavities as mediators between qubits and photons. The cavities allow for non-destructive readout of the qubit state, they shield the qubits from noise at the qubit frequency and they give us an easy way to frequency-tune these joint systems.\r\n\r\nWe need to operate superconducting qubits and their cavities at millikelvin temperatures in dilution refrigerators. At higher temperatures, superconductivity suffers and even worse, the environment is filled with thermal noise photons. This poses a fundamental limitation on the scalability of superconducting qubit devices. Also connecting multiple devices in different fridges does not work over room temperature links because the microwave photons used for this purpose will be covered in noise and the quantum information they carry, will be unusable.\r\n\r\nInfrared photons do not suffer from this noise problem since there are close to zero thermal noise photons at their frequencies at room temperature. We cannot simply interface superconducting devices with optical photons due their frequency mismatch and the destructive effect of optical photons on superconductors. Therefore, we use microwave-to-optics transducers that allow to convert microwave photons into optical ones and vice-versa. The transducers that we use are macroscopic electro-optic transducers using the Pockels effect in a disk-shaped Lithium Niobate whispering gallery mode resonator. By using a strong optical pump, photons from the two frequency domains experience a beam-splitter interaction and get converted from one to the other.\r\n\r\nWe measure the generated optical photons using elaborate optical setups, optical heterodyning and single photon detectors to gain knowledge about the qubit state or the converted microwave photons. Bridging the microwave and the optical world allows us to take advantage of both of their strengths but it also requires deep knowledge about both of their working principles.\r\n\r\nIn this work, we describe two experiments that our group conducted to showcase the opportunities that arise from interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons but also the pitfalls, one may encounter on the way.\r\n\r\nIn the first experiment, we managed to all-optically read out a superconducting qubit. We show that the assignment fidelity, the probability that a measurement of the qubit state matches the prepared state, is close to equal for all-optical, microwave-to-optics and conventional microwave readout. We show T1 and T2 measurements for all three readout types and give an analysis of the noise caused by the optics. Finally, we show that the infrared light does not affect the qubit performance in a negative way but that the heating it causes does. This is an important insight that we used in the next experiment.\r\n\r\nThe second experiment is the upconversion of itinerant single microwave photons to the optical domain. We show that we can generate single microwave photons from a qubit-cavity system. We upconvert these single photons, measure them with a single photon detector and reconstruct their shape. By conducting a single photon Rabi measurement, we show correlations between the microwave and the optical domain. And by thorough signal-to-noise measurements and noise analysis, we find that we can generate single infrared photons with high signal-to-noise ratio 5.1 and low transducer added noise (<0.012 quanta). We show that this measurement creates a path towards entanglement of a superconducting qubit and an optical photon and what parameters need to be improved to achieve it. Additionally, this experiment is a proof of principle for an on-demand infrared single photon source. More generally, it allows to link microwave quantum technology in general to the optical domain." acknowledged_ssus: - _id: M-Shop - _id: NanoFab - _id: LifeSc - _id: SSU acknowledgement: "The author of this work was supported by the European Research Council under grant no.\r\n101089099 (ERC CoG cQEO) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation\r\nprogram under grant no. 899354 (FETopen SuperQuLAN).\r\nThis work was also supported by the European Research Council under grant nos. 758053\r\n(ERC StG QUNNECT), 101248662 (ERC POC CoupledEOT), and the European Innovation\r\nCouncil no. 101187231 (PathfinderOpen CIELO). This research was funded in whole or in part\r\nby the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/F71]. For open access purposes, the author\r\nhas applied a CC BY public copyright license to any author accepted manuscript version arising\r\nfrom this submission.\r\niii\r\nMy co-authors in the works mentioned later acknowledge generous support from the ISTFELLOW program, the NOMIS-ISTA fellowship, the Horizon Europe Program HORIZONCL4-2022-QUANTUM-01-SGA via Project No. 101113946 OpenSuperQPlus100 and a DOC fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at IST Austria.\r\n" alternative_title: - ISTA Thesis article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Thomas full_name: Werner, Thomas id: 1fcd8497-dba3-11ea-a45e-c6fbd715f7c7 last_name: Werner orcid: 0009-0001-2346-5236 citation: ama: Werner T. Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons. 2026. doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-21863 apa: Werner, T. (2026). Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-21863 chicago: Werner, Thomas. “Interfacing Superconducting Qubits with Optical Photons.” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2026. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-21863. ieee: T. Werner, “Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons,” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2026. ista: Werner T. 2026. Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. mla: Werner, Thomas. Interfacing Superconducting Qubits with Optical Photons. Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2026, doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-21863. short: T. Werner, Interfacing Superconducting Qubits with Optical Photons, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2026. corr_author: '1' date_created: 2026-05-12T09:04:02Z date_published: 2026-05-12T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-05-20T13:35:43Z day: '12' ddc: - '530' - '537' - '539' degree_awarded: PhD department: - _id: GradSch - _id: JoFi doi: 10.15479/AT-ISTA-21863 ec_funded: 1 file: - access_level: open_access checksum: a5b4d8dba83f96e955a3625c0eebee98 content_type: application/pdf creator: twerner date_created: 2026-05-15T15:53:57Z date_updated: 2026-05-15T15:53:57Z file_id: '21879' file_name: 2026_Werner_Thomas_Thesis.pdf file_size: 9330516 relation: main_file - access_level: closed checksum: b41282beaacfb32472769b9e3b1758d8 content_type: application/x-zip-compressed creator: twerner date_created: 2026-05-15T15:54:06Z date_updated: 2026-05-15T15:54:06Z file_id: '21880' file_name: 2026_Werner_Thomas_Thesis.zip file_size: 9370704 relation: source_file file_date_updated: 2026-05-15T15:54:06Z has_accepted_license: '1' keyword: - Superconducting qubits - Quantum optics - Single photons and quantum effects - Nonlinear optics language: - iso: eng month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: '97' project: - _id: bdadfa0d-d553-11ed-ba76-fb85edbd456a grant_number: '101089099' name: 'Cavity Quantum Electro Optics: Microwave photonics with nonclassical states' - _id: 9B868D20-BA93-11EA-9121-9846C619BF3A call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '899354' name: Quantum Local Area Networks with Superconducting Qubits - _id: 26336814-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425 call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '758053' name: A Fiber Optic Transceiver for Superconducting Qubits - _id: 5b807754-ab3d-11f0-914f-ff8c34502cc9 grant_number: '101248662' name: Integrated optical coupling for low loss electro-optic interconnects - _id: 91aaf765-16d5-11f0-9cad-a8e7e44cccb7 grant_number: '101187231' name: 'Cavity-Integrated Electro-Optics: Measuring, Converting and Manipulating Microwaves with Light' - _id: bdb108fd-d553-11ed-ba76-83dc74a9864f grant_number: F07105 name: QUANTUM INFORMATION SYSTEMS BEYOND CLASSICAL CAPABILITIES / P5- Integration of Superconducting Quantum Circuits - _id: bdb7cfc1-d553-11ed-ba76-d2eaab167738 grant_number: '101080139' name: Open Superconducting Quantum Computers (OpenSuperQPlus) - _id: 9B861AAC-BA93-11EA-9121-9846C619BF3A name: NOMIS Fellowship Program publication_identifier: issn: - 2663-337X publication_status: published publisher: Institute of Science and Technology Austria related_material: record: - id: '19073' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '21870' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public status: public supervisor: - first_name: Johannes M full_name: Fink, Johannes M id: 4B591CBA-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Fink orcid: 0000-0001-8112-028X title: Interfacing superconducting qubits with optical photons tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: dissertation user_id: 8b945eb4-e2f2-11eb-945a-df72226e66a9 year: '2026' ...