A tunable high-Q millimeter wave cavity for hybrid circuit and cavity QED experiments

The millimeter wave (mm-wave) frequency band provides exciting prospects for quantum science and devices since many high-fidelity quantum emitters, including Rydberg atoms, molecules, and silicon vacancies, exhibit resonances near 100 GHz. High-Q resonators at these frequencies would give access to strong interactions between emitters and single photons, leading to rich and unexplored quantum phenomena at temperatures above 1 K. We report a 3D mm-wave cavity with a measured single-photon internal quality factor of 3 × 10 7 and mode volume of 0.14 × λ 3 at 98.2 GHz, sufficient to reach strong coupling in a Rydberg cavity quantum electrodynamics system. An in situ piezotunability of 18 MHz facilitates coupling to specific atomic transitions. Our unique, seamless, and optically accessible resonator design is enabled by the realization that intersections of 3D waveguides support tightly confined bound states below the waveguide cutoff frequency. Harnessing the features of our cavity design, we realize a hybrid mm-wave and optical cavity, designed for interconversion and entanglement of mm-wave and optical photons using Rydberg atoms.