We use photon echo based protocols with cryogenic rare earth ion dopants to create photon streams with time separated correlations. Theoretically, these streams are non-classically correlated. We present progress toward realizing this correlation.
The Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) scheme is a potential method to establish remote entanglements and realize large-scale quantum networks. Here we propose a DLCZ-like scheme based on the noiseless photon echo in rare-earth ion-doped crystals. Correlated photon pairs with a controllable delay can be created by the direct optical rephasing. Theoretical analysis indicates that the protocol is efficient in the low-optical-depth regime. This protocol could be feasibly implemented to establish long-lived quantum correlations between a photon and a spin-wave excitation in rare-earth ion-doped crystals.
Quantum networks of the future will be required to span the globe and interconnect many different real world systems employed by different commercial, academic, and government users. Thus, an important measure of such a network's capacity will be its ability to interact with and distribute entanglement among different mediums and devices with potentially disparate properties. Few experiments have to date shown this sort of interconnectivity between different systems with different atomic species. Here I will present our demonstration of a system in which we store two correlated photons in solid state quantum memories implemented in different rare earth ion-doped materials using the atomic frequency comb protocol. The photon pairs are generated through a spontaneous parametric down-conversion process with their wavelengths chosen to be compatible with quantum repeater implementations. One member, with a wavelength at 795 nm, is stored in an Tm:LiNbO3 crystal while, simultaneously, the other member, generated at 1535 nm wavelength, is stored in an amorphous erbium doped optical fiber. The measured cross-correlation function between the recalled photons is g(2) = 16 +/- 2, which verifies that the non-classical correlations are preserved and were present during the storage of both photons. The two storage mediums are diverse not only in terms of their different photon acceptance wavelengths, but also with regards to the material properties as hosts for the dopant rare-earth ions. Our results show that quantum nodes and networks based on fundamentally different systems can be interfaced to distribute entanglement.