Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics
Solid state source of non-classical multimode photon pairs with controllable delay
Kutlu Kutluer, Margherita Mazzera, Hugues de Riedmatten
Abstract
The process of storing information carried by single photons demands strong light-matter interaction. While interfacing single photon sources with quantum memories is still challenging, a possible short-cut by combining source and memory in the same ensemble was proposed by Duan, Lukin, Cirac, and Zoller (DLCZ) [1]. It is already a quite common protocol in cold atomic ensemble QMs, however it is very demanding to realize in solid state systems. Here we demonstrate for the first time a DLCZ-type memory with a rare-earth ion-doped crystal (REIC) with photon counting, directly applicable to the well-known quantum repeater schemes which works with QMs. We find second order cross correlation values up to 21±4 and violate Cauchy-Schwarz equality by R = 44 ± 20. Although the original DLCZ protocol does not support temporal multi-modality, we store 11 temporal modes thanks to a modified scheme in which we combine the DLCZ and the Atomic Frequency Comb protocols. Generating and storing non-classical multiplexed photon pairs with a single scheme in a REIC paves the way of making scalable, solid-state quantum repeater architectures.