Optical memory effect

Arun Madan, Melvin P. Shaw

M. Belov, Edward A. Manykin

A physical principle of the associative-memory optical implementation by using the photon-echo effect is proposed. The properties inherent in this phenomenon permit an optical scheme similar to the nonlinear holographic associative memory [Appl. Opt. 26, 1900 (1987)] to be considered. The associative-memory system based on the photon-echo effect uses a temporal selectivity instead of a spatial one.

Xia-Xia Li, Pai Zhou, Yuhui Chen +1 more

Integrated optical quantum memories are a scalable solution to synchronize a large number of quantum nodes. Without compact quantum memories, some astonishing quantum applications such as distributed quantum computing and quantum sensor networks would not be possible. Rather than find a specific material that meets all the requirements of an on-chip quantum memory as other protocols usually do, we propose to assign the memory requirements on coherent storage and controllability to rare-earth ions and a lithium niobate crystal, respectively. Specifically, optical quantum states are stored in an erbium-doped lithium niobate microcavity by utilizing the electro-optic effect of lithium niobate. The cavity frequency can be shifted by an external electric field, thus modifying the resonance condition between the cavity and the collective atomic excitation. This effect is further used to suppress or enhance the emission of photon echoes. Our calculated results show that high efficiency and a low noise performance are achievable.

Yoshito Tsunoda

Paul W. Nutter

José Soto M.

It has been generally accepted that the off-resonance heterodyne optical field in Stark-switching and frequency-switching techniques does not have any measurable influence in photon echo and other related experiments. In this work we present theoretical and experimental evidence that through a previously unknown memory effect the heterodyne field produces important undulations in the decay curves of photon echo. This effect appears to be also responsible for other experimental anomalies observed in optical coherent transient effects.1