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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Quantum telecommunication with atomic ensembles

S. D. Jenkins, Dzmitry Matsukevich, T. Chanelière, Shau-Yu Lan, T. A. B. Kennedy, A. Kuzmich

Published Jan 26, 2007• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum mechanics provides a mechanism for absolutely secure communication between remote parties. For distances greater than 100 km, direct quantum communication via optical fiber is not viable, owing to fiber losses, and intermediate storage of the quantum information along the transmission channel is necessary. This leads to the concept of the quantum repeater, proposed by Briegel et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 169 (1998)]. Duan [Nature 414, 413 (2001)] have proposed to use atomic ensembles as the basic memory elements for the quantum repeater. We provide an overview of our program on the use of atomic ensembles as an interface for quantum information transfer and the prospects for long-distance quantum networks.

DOI
10.1364/josab.24.000316

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Quantum mechanics provides a mechanism for absolutely secure communication between remote parties. For distances greater than 100 km, direct quantum communication via optical fiber is not viable, owing to fiber losses, and intermediate storage of the quantum information along the transmission channel is necessary. This leads to the concept of the quantum repeater, proposed by Briegel et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 169 (1998)]. Duan [Nature 414, 413 (2001)] have proposed to use atomic ensembles as the basic memory elements for the quantum repeater. We provide an overview of our program on the use of atomic ensembles as an interface for quantum information transfer and the prospects for long-distance quantum networks.
Quantum communication networks enable secure transmission of information between remote sites. However, at present, photon losses in the optical fiber limit communication distances to less than 150 kilometers. The quantum repeater idea allows extension of these distances. In practice, it involves the ability to store quantum information for a long time in atomic systems and coherently transfer quantum states between matter and light. Previously known schemes involved atomic Raman transitions in the UV or near-infrared and suffered from severe loss in optical fiber that precluded long-distance quantum communication.
Quantum communication deals with absolutely secure transfer of classical messages by means of quantum cryptography or faithful transfer of unknown quantum states by means of quantum teleportation between distant sites. The essential element for quantum communication is to create remote entangled pairs of high fidelity. The main difficulty to create such a distant entangled pair is that both photon loss and decoherence grow exponentially with distance. However, with the help of quantum repeater, it is demonstrated that both the entanglement sources and the time needed to create a single distant entangled pair of high fidelity could scale polynomially with the communication length. Here we propose a robust quantum repeater by extending the original Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) scheme based on atomic ensembles and linear optics. Our protocol entails the advantage of two photon interference, which is more robust than single photon interference used in the DLCZ scheme. In comparison with our previous proposal, the entangled memory qubits are manipulated across long distance, and local entanglement pairs are avoided. Our proposal provides an exciting possibility for realistic long distance quantum communication.
Quantum networks, capable of transmitting arbitrary quantum states, provide a foundation for a wide range of quantum applications, including distributed quantum computing, distributed quantum sensing, and quantum communication. Photons are the natural carrier of information in quantum networks, but the exponential loss of optical fiber channels prevents the construction of large-scale quantum networks. A potential solution is implementing quantum repeaters based on quantum memories, which can efficiently establish long-distance entanglement from short-distance entanglement. In the past decades, intense efforts have been devoted to constructing large-scale quantum networks based on various atomic quantum memories. In this Perspective, we present a concise overview of current advancements in remote quantum networks, elucidate the imminent challenges that must be addressed, and discuss the future directions.
Quantum communication between two remote locations often involves remote parties sharing an entangled quantum state. At present, entanglement distribution is usually performed using photons transmitted through optical fibers. However, the absorption of light in the fiber limits the communication distances to less than 200 km, even for optimal photon telecom wavelengths. To increase this distance, the quantum repeater idea was proposed. In the quantum repeater architecture, one divides communication distance into segments of the order of the attenuation length of the photons and places quantum memory nodes at the intermediate locations. Since the photon loss between intermediate locations is low, it is possible then to establish entanglement between intermediate quantum memory nodes. Once entanglement between adjacent nodes is established, one can extend it over larger distances using entanglement swapping.\n\nThe long coherence time of a quantum memory is a crucial requirement for the quantum repeater protocol. It is obvious that the coherence time of a quantum memory should be much longer that the time it takes for light to travel between remote locations. For a communication distance l = 1000 km, the corresponding time is t = l/c = 3.3 ms. One can show that for a simple repeater protocol and realistic success probabilities of entanglement generation, the required coherence time should be on the order of many seconds, while for the more complicated protocols that involve multiplexing and several quantum memory cells per intermediate node, the required coherence time is on the order of milliseconds.\n\nIn this thesis, I describe a quantum memory based on an ensemble of rubidium atoms confined in a one-dimensional optical lattice. The use of the magnetically- insensitive clock transition and suppression of atomic motion allows us to increase coherence time of the quantum memory by two-orders of magnitude compared to previous work. I also propose a method for determining the Zeeman content of atomic samples. In addition, I demonstrate the observation of quantum evolution under continuous measurement. The long quantum memory lifetime demonstrated in this work opens the way for scalable processing of quantum information and long distance quantum communication.
Enabling secure communication, unparalleled computing capabilities, and fundamental nonlocality physics exploration, the development of quantum repeaters is the key quantum information processing technology advance needed for implementing real world quantum networks beyond the laboratory environment. Currently, components exist for intra-laboratory quantum networks but no system exists for connecting distant ( 1 km ) quantum memories in the real world. We present a physics analysis of quantum repeater network designs for intracity optical fiber connections between nodes based on atomic memories and linear optics. Long distances will necessitate the use of (1) two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel style interference between atomic ensembles for entanglement swapping, and (2) photonic qubit wavelength conversion between atomic emissions and photons at telecommunication wavelengths in fiber. We report on our experimental progress towards implementing A Quantum Network with Atoms and Photons (QNET-AP), a quantum repeater network test-bed, between the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland (UMD).