Quantum memory devices with high storage efficiency and bandwidth are essential elements for future quantum networks. Solid-state quantum memories can provide broadband storage, but they primarily suffer from low storage efficiency. We use passive optimization and machine learning techniques to demonstrate more than 6-fold enhancement in quantum memory efficiency. In this regime, we demonstrate coherent and single-photon-level storage with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The optimization technique presented here can be applied to most solid-state quantum memories to significantly improve the storage efficiency without compromising the memory bandwidth.
Quantum memory devices with high storage efficiency and bandwidth are essential elements for future quantum networks. Solid-state quantum memories can provide broadband storage, but they primarily suffer from low storage efficiency. We use passive optimization and algorithmic optimization techniques to demonstrate nearly a sixfold enhancement in quantum memory efficiency. In this regime, we demonstrate coherent and single-photon-level storage with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The optimization technique presented here can be applied to most solid-state quantum memories to significantly improve the storage efficiency without compromising the memory bandwidth. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Future optical quantum technologies, such as quantum networks, distributed quantum computing and sensing, demand efficient, broadband quantum memories. However, achieving high efficiency without introducing noise, reducing bandwidth, or limiting scalability remains a challenge. Here, we present a new approach to enhance quantum memory protocols by leveraging constructive light-matter interference, leading to an increase in memory efficiency without increasing atomic density or laser intensity. We implement this method in a Raman quantum memory in warm Cesium vapor, and achieve more than a three-fold improvement in total efficiency reaching
(34.3±8.4)%, while retaining GHz-bandwidth operation and low noise levels. Numerical simulations predict that this approach can boost efficiencies in systems limited by atomic density, such as cold atomic ensembles, from
65% to beyond
96%, while in warm atomic vapors it could reduce the laser intensity needed to reach a given efficiency by over an order-of-magnitude, exceeding
95% total efficiency. Furthermore, our method preserves the single-mode nature of the memory at high efficiencies. This new protocol is applicable to various memory architectures, paving the way toward scalable, efficient, low-noise, and high-bandwidth quantum memories.
Quantum memories are a fundamental of any global-scale quantum Internet, high-performance quantum networking and near-term quantum computers. A main problem of quantum memories is the low retrieval efficiency of the quantum systems from the quantum registers of the quantum memory. Here, we define a novel quantum memory called high-retrieval-efficiency (HRE) quantum memory for near-term quantum devices. An HRE quantum memory unit integrates local unitary operations on its hardware level for the optimization of the readout procedure and utilizes the advanced techniques of quantum machine learning. We define the integrated unitary operations of an HRE quantum memory, prove the learning procedure, and evaluate the achievable output signal-to-noise ratio values. We prove that the local unitaries of an HRE quantum memory achieve the optimization of the readout procedure in an unsupervised manner without the use of any labeled data or training sequences. We show that the readout procedure of an HRE quantum memory is realized in a completely blind manner without any information about the input quantum system or about the unknown quantum operation of the quantum register. We evaluate the retrieval efficiency of an HRE quantum memory and the output SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). The results are particularly convenient for gate-model quantum computers and the near-term quantum devices of the quantum Internet.
Future optical quantum technologies, such as quantum networks, distributed quantum computing and sensing, demand efficient, broadband quantum memories. However, achieving high efficiency without introducing noise, reducing bandwidth, or limiting scalability remains a challenge. Here, we present an approach to enhance quantum memory protocols by leveraging constructive light–matter interference, leading to an increase in memory efficiency without increasing atomic density or laser intensity. We implement this method in a Raman quantum memory in warm cesium vapor and achieve more than a threefold improvement in total efficiency, reaching (34.3±8.4)%, while retaining GHz-bandwidth operation and low noise levels. Numerical simulations predict that this approach can boost efficiencies in systems limited by atomic density, such as cold atomic ensembles, from 65% to beyond 96%, while in warm atomic vapors, it could reduce the laser intensity needed to reach a given efficiency by over an order-of-magnitude, exceeding 95% total efficiency. Furthermore, our method preserves the single-mode nature of the memory at high efficiencies. This protocol is applicable to various memory architectures, paving the way toward scalable, efficient, low-noise, and high-bandwidth quantum memories.
A major challenge in quantum technologies is to build an efficient and long-lived quantum memory, particularly using solid-state devices. I will here report on an experiment where we combine the AFC optical memory with spin-echo techniques to extend the memory time from a few microseconds to about 1 ms, using an Europium-doped crystal. In general the spin-echo technique allows one to control the inhomogeneous spin dephasing which often sets the storage-time limit both in solid-state systems and laser-cooled gases. However, theoretically it is has been argued that spin-echo techniques would be extremely difficult to apply without creating noise in the case of a single quanta stored in a large spin ensemble. We here show how this noise can be limited and demonstrate high signal-to-noise ratio in the output mode when storing pulses at the single-photon level. Furthermore we stored polarization qubits encoded onto weak coherent , with fidelities surpassing a classical storage scheme.