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  • Open Access

Photon-echo synchronization and quantum state transfer in short quantum links

Hong Jiang†, Carlos Barahona-Pascual†, and Juan José García-Ripoll*

  • *Contact author: jj.garcia.ripoll@csic.es
  • †These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 044034 – Published 13 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/f42v-1dx7

Abstract

The short quantum link regime, where the photon travel time τ is comparable to the emitter lifetime 1/γ, is experimentally relevant but theoretically underexplored: existing few-mode descriptions lose validity as retardation and multimode effects become significant. Using a delay differential equation (DDE) framework that admits exact analytical solutions from the single-mode cavity limit to the multimode waveguide continuum, we show that emitters coupled to a short link spontaneously lock into self-synchronized Rabi oscillations driven by coherent photon echoes, breaking the link’s discrete time-displacement symmetry. The resulting spectral structure—persistent quasidark states and vacuum Rabi splitting, including in the superstrong coupling regime—enables efficient quantum state transfer (QST): benchmarking three protocols across the full γτ parameter space, we find that STIRAP exploits the quasi-dark-state structure to achieve a quadratic infidelity floor O[(γτ)2], outperforming both SWAP (linear error O(γτ)) and wave-packet engineering for γτ≲1.44, even in regimes where retardation cannot be neglected. These results establish photon-echo synchronization as an engineering resource for quantum state transfer, with DDE modeling providing the exact analytical predictions needed to design and optimize short-link experiments on current circuit-QED hardware.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 044034– Published 13 October, 2026
  • Received 10 April 2026
  • Revised 29 July 2026
  • Accepted 18 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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