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arXiv:0807.0067 · Physical Review A

Analytic treatment of controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening quantum memories for light using two-level atoms

Jevon J. Longdell, Gabriel Hetet, Ping Koy Lam, Matthew J. Sellars

Published Sep 30, 2008• 62 citations
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Abstract

It has recently been discovered that the optical analog of a gradient echo, in an optically thick material, could form the basis of an optical memory that is both completely efficient and noise-free. Here we present analytical calculations showing that this is the case. There is close analogy between the operation of the memory and an optical system with two beam splitters. We can use this analogy to calculate efficiencies as a function of optical depth for a number of quantum memory schemes based on controlled inhomogeneous broadening. In particular, we show that multiple switching leads to a net 100% retrieval efficiency for the optical gradient echo even in the optically thin case.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.032337

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It has recently been discovered that the optical analog of a gradient echo, in an optically thick material, could form the basis of an optical memory that is both completely efficient and noise-free. Here we present analytical calculations showing that this is the case. There is close analogy between the operation of the memory and an optical system with two beam splitters. We can use this analogy to calculate efficiencies as a function of optical depth for a number of quantum memory schemes based on controlled inhomogeneous broadening. In particular, we show that multiple switching leads to a net 100% retrieval efficiency for the optical gradient echo even in the optically thin case.
Here we show that the photon echo equivalent of an NMR gradient echo is completely efficient if the sample is optically thick, the detunings of the atoms vary linearly along the direction of propagation and the storage time is short compared to the decay rate of the atoms. In this process the only light that interacts with the sample of atoms during the storage and retrieval process is the light that is to be stored and then retrieved, their are no auxiliary beams. The stored and recalled light travel in the same direction and their is no need for the phase matching operation that is present in previous quantum memory proposals using controlled inhomogeneous broadening. This greatly simplifies various possible implementations. We present analytical, numerical and experimental results of this scheme. We report experimental efficiencies of up to 15% and suggest simple realizable improvements to significantly increase the efficiency.
Here, we propose a solid-state quantum memory that does not require spectral holeburning, instead using strong rephasing pulses like traditional photon-echo techniques. The memory uses external broadening fields to reduce the optical depth and so switch off the collective atom-light interaction when desired. The proposed memory should allow operation with reasonable efficiency in a much broader range of material systems, for instance Er3+{}^{3+}3+ doped crystals which have a transition at 1.5 $\ensuremath{\mu}\text{m}$. We present analytic theory supported by numerical calculations and initial experiments.
We present a simple quantum memory scheme that allows for the storage of a light field in an ensemble of two-level atoms. The technique is analogous to the NMR gradient echo for which the imprinting and recalling of the input field are performed by controlling a linearly varying broadening. Our protocol is perfectly efficient in the limit of high optical depths and the output pulse is emitted in the forward direction. We provide a numerical analysis of the protocol together with an experiment performed in a solid state system. In close agreement with our model, the experiment shows a total efficiency of up to 15%, and a recall efficiency of 26%. We suggest simple realizable improvements for the experiment to surpass the no-cloning limit.
We propose a method to implement a quantum memory for light based on ensembles of two-level atoms. Our protocol is based on controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening (CRIB), where an external field first dephases the atomic polarization and thereby stores an incoming light pulse into collective states of the atomic ensemble, and later a reversal of the applied field leads to a rephasing of the atomic polarization and a reemission of the light. As opposed to previous proposals for CRIB-based quantum memories, we propose only applying the broadening for a short period after most of the pulse has already been absorbed by the ensemble. We show that with this procedure there exist certain modes of the incoming light field that can be stored with an efficiency approaching 100% in the limit of high optical depth and long coherence time of the atoms. These results demonstrate that it is possible to operate an efficient quantum memory without any optical control fields.
We propose an efficient quantum memory scheme with controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening in an optical cavity.When the absorption per cavity round trip exactly matches the transmission of the coupling mirror(impedance matching condition),we show that the input light field can be completely absorbed by an inhomogeneous broadening atomic ensemble.From calculation we obtain that either a forward or a backward retrieval process the quantum memory efficiency can reach unity even for a small optical depth of the atomic system.If there is no cavity,100% efficiency is obtained only for extremely large optical depth.A high efficiency for the quantum memory at a small optical depth is easily achieved in practice.Therefore our proposal offers promising possibilities for the practical realization of high quantum memory efficiency.
This paper presents a simple quantum memory method for efficient storage and retrieve of light. The technique is based on the principle of controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening for which the information of the quantum state light is imprinted in a two-level atoms ensemble and recalled by flipping the external nonuniform electric field. In present work, the induced Stark shift varied linearly with position, and a numerical analysis for this protocol has been studied. It shows that the storage efficiency can nearly reach 100% with a large enough optical depth, and the optimal broadening for a given pulse width is also analyzed.