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arXiv:1807.11391 · Physical Review A

Atomic-frequency-comb quantum memory via piecewise adiabatic passage

J. L. Rubio, Daniel Viscor, J. Mompart, V. Ahufinger

Published Oct 16, 2018• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to create an atomic frequency comb (AFC) in hot atomic vapors using the piecewise adiabatic passage (PAP) technique. Due to the Doppler effect, the trains of pulses used for PAP give rise to a velocity-dependent transfer of the atomic population from the initial state to the target one, thus forming a velocity comb whose periodicity depends not only on the repetition rate of the applied pulses but also on the specific atomic transitions considered. We highlight the advantages of using this transfer technique with respect to standard methods and discuss, in particular, its application to store a single telecom photon in an AFC quantum memory using a high density Ba atomic vapor.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.043834

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In this paper, we propose a method to create an atomic frequency comb (AFC) in hot atomic vapors using the piecewise adiabatic passage (PAP) technique. Due to the Doppler effect, the trains of pulses used for PAP give rise to a velocity-dependent transfer of the atomic population from the initial state to the target one, thus forming a velocity comb whose periodicity depends not only on the repetition rate of the applied pulses but also on the specific atomic transitions considered. We highlight the advantages of using this transfer technique with respect to standard methods and discuss, in particular, its application to store a single telecom photon in an AFC quantum memory using a high density Ba atomic vapor.
Abstract Quantum communication is an emerging field of the utmost importance. A critical component for scalable quantum communication, and other emerging quantum technologies is a robust practical quantum memory. We look at a theoretical model of a three level Λ quantum memory in a warm atomic gas complete with the Doppler broadening. A linearization procedure to compute solutions for the full set of Heisenberg-Langevin equations with the propagation equations is described. The atomic frequency comb (AFC) protocol together with the piecewise adiabatic passage (PAP) method in warm atomic gas is briefly discussed.
Quantum memories are used for storing the quantum mechanical states of photons and release identical photons at a later time. This has many applications within the field of quantum computing and is also essential in order to achieve long range quantum communication and cryptography. In this thesis Atomic frequency comb (AFC) quantum memories were investigated. In particular, three-level memory schemes were investigated in detail and a program for simulating these protocols was developed. These schemes make use of control pulses to transfer the population from the optically excited state to a ground state hyperfine level, as well as radio frequency fields to swap the population in the two ground state hyperfine levels. In this work control and RF pulses, tailored to give good transfer rates, are suggested and effects due to off resonant excitation was investigated. A memory protocol which could give efficiencies up to 60% for Praseodymium doped Yttrium Silicate based AFC memories is proposed. The main bottleneck for reaching higher efficiencies is that the AFC peak spacing needs to be small in order to give enough time to transfer the population to the spin state with the control pulses. With the control pulses suggested in this work and the current technology of tailoring AFC peaks in Pr-based memories, this gives a maximum finesse of 6 of the AFC structure.
Photonic quantum memory, such as an atomic frequency comb (AFC), is essential to make photonic quantum computation and long distance quantum communication scalable and feasible. In standard AFC the frequency of different atoms must be stable relative to each other which presents difficulties in realizing the quantum memory. Here we propose a quantum memory using an intra-atomic frequency comb which does not require frequency stabilization. We show that the transitions between two degenerate energy levels of a single atom can be used to construct the frequency comb. The spacing between the teeth of the comb is controlled by applying an external magnetic field. Since the frequency comb is constructed from individual atoms, these atoms can be used alone or in ensembles to realize the quantum memory. Furthermore, the ensemble based quantum memory with intra-AFC is robust against Doppler broadening which makes it useful for high-temperature quantum memory. As an example, we numerically show the intra-AFC in cesium atoms and demonstrate a photon echo which is essential for quantum memory.
An atomic frequency comb (AFC) made of an ensemble of atoms with a periodic optical resonance was originally proposed as a viable approach for quantum memory for photons. In this paper we examine the quantum cloning capacity of an AFC in terms of the spectral distribution of the atomic populations in the energy levels associated with the optical transition. Expressions are derived for the memory readout efficiency, signal to noise ratio, and fidelity for an input at the single photon level. When applied to a square-toothed AFC, our analysis shows that there is a region where amplification from the excited state population results in greater than unit readout efficiency at a cost of fidelity being less than perfect, but still greater than the classical limit. The theory is developed under the assumption that both AFC and photon wave packets are spatially uniform. This can be regarded as a single spatial location inside an AFC and can be further expanded to study optically thick AFC with atomic population in both levels, which may find applications for quantum memory and quantum cloning machine.
We demonstrated a highly efficient optical memory operation using an atomic frequency comb (AFC) created from a spectrally flattened optical frequency comb with an isotopically pure 167 Er 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 crystal under zero magnetic field. Compared with standard AFC creation methods such as pulse train method, our method, called comb transfer method, can create a broadband and high-efficiency AFC at lower power and with less effort. This technique can make a significant improvement in the quality of AFCs in crystals doped with low concentrations of rare-earth ions.
The atomic frequency comb (AFC) is a promising approach for quantum memory, yet creating an ideal AFC only in the ground-state population remains a challenge. We studied an imperfect AFC initially created in the population inversion between the excited and ground states and redistributed due to population relaxation in a three-level system where a long-lived metastable state plays a crucial role. A theoretical model has been developed to treat the storage of a weak input pulse and retrieval in the form of a photon echo. By comparing theory with experimental results we have studied the echo efficiency and overall attenuation of an input pulse in the AFC affected by both its initial spectral structure and the population relaxation.