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arXiv:1211.0612 · Physical Review Letters

Coherent Optical Memory with High Storage Efficiency and Large Fractional Delay

Yi‐Hsin Chen, Meng‐Jung Lee, I-Chung Wang, Shengwang Du, Yong‐Fan Chen, Ying-Cheng Chen, Ite A. Yu

Published Feb 20, 2013• 202 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A high-storage efficiency and long-lived quantum memory for photons is an essential component in long-distance quantum communication and optical quantum computation. Here, we report a 78% storage efficiency of light pulses in a cold atomic medium based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency. At 50% storage efficiency, we obtain a fractional delay of 74, which is the best up-to-date record. The classical fidelity of the recalled pulse is better than 90% and nearly independent of the storage time, as confirmed by the direct measurement of phase evolution of the output light pulse with a beat-note interferometer. Such excellent phase coherence between the stored and recalled light pulses suggests that the current result may be readily applied to single photon wave packets. Our work significantly advances the technology of electromagnetically induced transparency-based optical memory and may find practical applications in long-distance quantum communication and optical quantum computation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.110.083601

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A high-storage efficiency and long-lived quantum memory for photons is an essential component in long-distance quantum communication and optical quantum computation. Here, we report a 78% storage efficiency of light pulses in a cold atomic medium based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency. At 50% storage efficiency, we obtain a fractional delay of 74, which is the best up-to-date record. The classical fidelity of the recalled pulse is better than 90% and nearly independent of the storage time, as confirmed by the direct measurement of phase evolution of the output light pulse with a beat-note interferometer. Such excellent phase coherence between the stored and recalled light pulses suggests that the current result may be readily applied to single photon wave packets. Our work significantly advances the technology of electromagnetically induced transparency-based optical memory and may find practical applications in long-distance quantum communication and optical quantum computation.
A high-storage efficiency and long-live quantum memory for photons is an essential component for the information processing in long-distance quantum communication and optical quantum computation. We demonstrated a 78% storage efficiency (SE) of coherent light pulses with a cold atomic medium based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We also obtained a large fractional delay of 74 at 50% SE, which is the best record to date. The measured fidelity of the memory is better than 90%. The results suggest the EIT light-matter interface can be readily applied to single-photon quantum states. Our work greatly advances the technology of EIT-based quantum memory for the practical quantum information applications.
Quantum memory is an important component in the long-distance quantum communication system based on the quantum repeater protocol. To outperform the direct transmission of photons with quantum repeaters, it is crucial to develop quantum memories with high fidelity, high efficiency and a long storage time. Here, we achieve a storage efficiency of 96\% for a photonic memory based on the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) scheme in cold atomic media with an optical depth of near 1000. At a storage efficiency of 50\%, we also obtain a fractional delay of 1200. Both are the best record to date in all kinds of the schemes for the realization of quantum memory. Our work significantly advances the pursuit of a high-performance photonic memory and should have important applications in quantum information science.
Quantum memory is an important component in the long-distance quantum communication based on the quantum repeater protocol. To outperform the direct transmission of photons with quantum repeaters, it is crucial to develop quantum memories with high fidelity, high efficiency and a long storage time. Here, we achieve a storage efficiency of 92.0 (1.5)% for a coherent optical memory based on the electromagnetically induced transparency scheme in optically dense cold atomic media. We also obtain a useful time-bandwidth product of 1200, considering only storage where the retrieval efficiency remains above 50%. Both are the best record to date in all kinds of schemes for the realization of optical memory. Our work significantly advances the pursuit of a high-performance optical memory and should have important applications in quantum information science.
Optical quantum memories are important components in the long-distance quantum communication based on quantum repeater protocol. To outperform the direct transmission of light with quantum repeaters, it is crucial to develop quantum memories with high fidelity, high efficiency and long storage time. Recently, we demonstrate that it is feasible to achieve a high storage efficiency of 92% for electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT)-based memory with weak coherent signal pulses in cold atomic ensembles [1]. To realize the highly-efficient memory with quantum light, we have built a bright and narrowband photon-pair source which can be locked to atomic transition based on the cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down conversion [2]. Here, we present our results on the storage of single photons generated by such a source in EIT-based memories. A storage efficiency of 36% is obtained in initial runs. Future improvements toward a high efficiency are discussed. Such a development paves the way for the applications of photon-pair-based quantum repeater and multi-photon synchronization.
Quantum storage of flying optical qubits, namely coherently mapping photonic states into and out of an optically controlled memory on demand, constitutes an essential component in the optical quantum information processing science, with applications to long-distance optical communication [1]. In this context, practical protocols require sufficiently large storage efficiency to achieve a performance better than direct transmission. Theoretically, the storage and retrieval efficiency can only be improved with the increase of the optical depth (OD). Recent progresses have shown that high OD media enable to reach high-efficiency electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)-based optical storage, albeit without the demonstration of qubit storage [2, 3]. Here we experimentally implement an optical quantum memory with single-photon-level probes, showing a EIT-based storage efficiency around 70%. Furthermore, thanks to the spatial multiplexing of the dense atomic ensemble, highly efficient storage of polarization qubit is performed.
Abstract Efficient and long-term storage of quantum information encoded in single photons is crucial for applications of optical quantum technologies, e.g. quantum repeaters in communication networks. Obviously, the maximal storage time is an important benchmark for such memories, as it defines the distances covered by the network or the applicability of quantum communication protocols therein. In this paper, we present the implementation of an optical memory driven by electromagnetically induced transparency, permitting the storage of weak coherent pulses containing on average a single photon with a signal-to-noise ratio of 1.3 ( 3 ) for a long storage time of one second. To achieve this goal, we apply decoherence control by static magnetic fields and robust dynamical decoupling sequences to prolong the coherence time in a rare-earth ion doped crystal to 14 s. A novel optical preparation scheme serves to increase the optical depth of the medium, which enables a light storage efficiency of 12.7 ( 5 ) % at the single photon level and one second storage time.