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arXiv:0805.3348 · Physical Review A

Optimal light storage in atomic vapor

Nathaniel B. Phillips, Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov, Irina V. Novikova

Published Aug 1, 2008• 124 citations
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Abstract

We study procedures for the optimization of efficiency of light storage and retrieval based on the dynamic form of electromagnetically induced transparency in hot Rb vapor. We present a detailed analysis of two recently demonstrated optimization protocols: a time-reversal-based iteration procedure, which finds the optimal input signal pulse shape for any given control field, and a procedure based on the calculation of an optimal control field for any given signal pulse shape. We verify that the two procedures are mutually consistent and that they both independently achieve the maximum memory efficiency for any given optical depth. We observe good agreement with theoretical predictions for moderate optical depths $(<25)$, while at higher optical depths the experimental efficiency falls below the theoretically predicted values. We identify possible effects responsible for this reduction in memory efficiency.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.023801

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We study procedures for the optimization of efficiency of light storage and retrieval based on the dynamic form of electromagnetically induced transparency in hot Rb vapor. We present a detailed analysis of two recently demonstrated optimization protocols: a time-reversal-based iteration procedure, which finds the optimal input signal pulse shape for any given control field, and a procedure based on the calculation of an optimal control field for any given signal pulse shape. We verify that the two procedures are mutually consistent and that they both independently achieve the maximum memory efficiency for any given optical depth. We observe good agreement with theoretical predictions for moderate optical depths (<25)(<25)(<25), while at higher optical depths the experimental efficiency falls below the theoretically predicted values. We identify possible effects responsible for this reduction in memory efficiency.
We present a preliminary experimental study of optimized slow and stored light pulses in Rb vapor cells. We study the effciency of light storage as a function of pulse duration, storage time, retrieval field intensity, etc. We demonstrate a procedure based on time reversal for the optimization of the effciency for storage of light in atomic ensembles suggested in a recent theoretical paper [A.V. Gorshkov et al., e-print archive quant-ph/0604037 (2006)]. Experimental results are in a good qualitative agreement with theoretical calculations based on a simplified three-level model.
The recent prospect of efficient, reliable, and secure quantum communication relies on the ability to coherently and reversibly map nonclassical states of light onto long-lived atomic states. A promising technique that accomplishes this employs Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT), in which a strong classical control field modifies the optical properties of a weak signal field in such a way that a previously opaque medium becomes transparent to the signal field. The accompanying steep dispersion in the index of refraction allows for pulses of light to be decelerated, then stored as an atomic excitation, and later retrieved as a photonic mode. This dissertation presents the results of investigations into methods for optimizing the memory efficiency of this process in an ensemble of hot Rb atoms. We have experimentally demonstrated the effectiveness of two protocols for yielding the best memory efficiency possible at a given atomic density. Improving memory efficiency requires operation at higher optical depths, where undesired effects such as four-wave mixing (FWM) become enhanced and can spontaneously produce a new optical mode (Stokes field). We present the results of experimental and theoretical investigations of the FWM-EIT interaction under continuous-wave (cw), slow light, and stored light conditions. In particular, we provide evidence that indicates that while a Stokes field is generated upon retrieval of the signal field, any information originally encoded in a seeded Stokes field is not independently preserved during the storage process. We present a simple model that describes the propagation dynamics and provides an intuitive description of the EIT-FWM process.