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Science

A quantum optical storage box

Ian S. Osborne

Published Sep 6, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Optics The development of information technologies based on quantum optics relies crucially on the ability to generate and propagate single photons in free space or optic fibers over vast distances. However, information processing also requires memory or storage functionality, and the ability to hold on to photons tends to pose a challenge. Seri et al. used femtosecond laser pulses to micromachine waveguides in an optical crystal of Pr3+:Y2SiO5. By identifying irradiation conditions that avoid damage to the crystal, they found that the properties of the waveguide, such as the storage time for single photons, are enhanced. Relatively long storage times, combined with compatibility with other optical processing technologies, could provide a powerful platform for developing complex integrated quantum architectures. Optica 5 , 934 (2018).

DOI
10.1126/science.361.6406.988-d

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Quantum Optics
The development of information technologies based on quantum optics relies crucially on the ability to generate and propagate single photons in free space or optic fibers over vast distances. However, information processing also requires memory or storage functionality, and the ability to hold on to photons tends to pose a challenge. Seri et al. used femtosecond laser pulses to micromachine waveguides in an optical crystal of Pr3+:Y2SiO5. By identifying irradiation conditions that avoid damage to the crystal, they found that the properties of the waveguide, such as the storage time for single photons, are enhanced. Relatively long storage times, combined with compatibility with other optical processing technologies, could provide a powerful platform for developing complex integrated quantum architectures.
Optica 5 , 934 (2018).
Physics Photons are ideal carriers of information. They are fast and coherent, and because they don't interact much with each other they can have very long lifetimes. However, stopping, processing, and manipulating the photons requires them to be stored in a memory, where doing so can damage their fragile quantum properties, which leads to a loss of coherence. Although photons have been coherently stored in and retrieved from ensembles of atom gases, both warm and cold atom clouds, for practical applications a solid-state memory would be desired. Heinze et al. have developed a method to enhance the storage time of photons in a rare-earth–ion—doped crystal. They use a series of laser pulses to initialize the crystal for photon storage and then load it with their “information photons.” By iteratively optimizing the experimental parameters, they show that they can store light pulses and even entire images in the crystal and then retrieve them up to a minute later with their coherent properties intact. The results present an important step toward building a viable quantum network. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 , 033601(2013).
Efficient and long-lived interfaces between light and matter are crucial for the development of quantum information technologies. Integrated photonic solutions for quantum storage devices offer improved performances due to light confinement and enable more complex and scalable designs. We demonstrate a novel platform for quantum light storage based on laser written waveguides. The new adopted writing regime allows us to attain waveguides with improved confining capabilities compared to previous demonstrations. We report the first demonstration of single-photon storage in laser written waveguides. While we achieve storage efficiencies comparable to those observed in massive samples, the power involved for the memory preparation is strongly reduced, by a factor 100, due to an enhancement of the light–matter interaction of almost one order of magnitude. Moreover, we demonstrate excited-state storage times 100 times longer than previous realizations with single photons in integrated quantum memories. Our system promises to effectively fulfill the requirements for efficient and scalable integrated quantum storage devices.
Efficient and long-lived multimode quantum memories are crucial devices in the development of quantum technolgies. The reversible mapping of quantum states of light in rare earth doped crystals represents one of the most promising routes towards the realization of this goal. Such systems are also compatible with the miniaturization of quantum memories in integrated optics platforms, which offer unique features in terms of experimental scalability and enhanced light-matter interaction. Here, we fabricate single mode channel waveguides for 606 nm light in a praseodymium-doped yttrium orthosilicate crystal (Pr3+:Y2SiO5), that, thanks to its excellent coherence properties, is a widely studied material for light storage experiments. Waveguides are inscribed by femtosecond laser writing, adopting the so-called Type I configuration, where the core is directly obtained at the irradiated area. Remarkably, fabricating this kind of waveguides in crystals is a difficult task, as it requires to operate in a very narrow processing parameters window, if existing. We then use these waveguides for performing the storage and retrieval of single photons, implementing the atomic frequency comb protocol. We achieve a storage time of 5,5 µs, which is almost 2 orders of magnitude longer than previous realizations of quantum light storage in a waveguide. In addition, we investigate the potential information multiplexing capabilities of our system by performing the quantum storage of single photons delocalized over 14 different spectral modes. Our results show that laser written waveguides in rare earth-doped solid state systems are very promising for the development of efficient and long-lived multimode quantum memories.
Single photons are a vital resource for optical quantum information processing. Efficient and deterministic single photon sources do not yet exist, however. To date, experimental demonstrations of quantum processing primitives have been implemented using non-deterministic sources combined with heralding and/or postselection. Unfortunately, even for eight photons, the data rates are already so low as to make most experiments impracticable. It is well known that quantum memories, capable of storing photons until they are needed, are a potential solution to this `scaling catastrophe'. Here, we analyze in detail the benefits of quantum memories for producing multiphoton states, showing how the production rates can be enhanced by many orders of magnitude. We identify the quantity etaBeta BetaB as the most important figure of merit in this connection, where etaetaeta and BBB are the efficiency and time-bandwidth product of the memories, respectively. We go on to review our progress in implementing the most broadband memory to date, with B<1000B<1000B<1000, in room-temperature cesium vapour. We consider the noise properties for single photon storage and the integration of the memory using waveguides.
Quantum memories for light are essential building blocks for quantum repeaters and quantum networks. Integrated operations of quantum memories could enable scalable application with low-power consumption. However, the photonic quantum storage lifetime in integrated devices has so far been limited to tens of microseconds, falling short of the requirements for practical applications. Here, we demonstrate quantum storage of photonic qubits for 1.021 milliseconds based on a laser-written optical waveguide fabricated in a 151 Eu 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 crystal. Spin dephasing of 151 Eu 3+ is mitigated through dynamical decoupling applied via on-chip electric waveguides, and we obtain a storage efficiency of 12.0 ± 0.5% at 1.021 milliseconds, which is a demonstration of integrated quantum memories that outperforms the efficiency of a simple fiber delay line. Such long-lived waveguide-based quantum memory could support applications in quantum repeaters, and further combination with critical magnetic fields could enable potential application as transportable quantum memories.
Quantum memory is an essential building block for applications in quantum information science, where scalability and integrability are needed for progress toward large-scale architectures. The authors present a platform for integrated photonic memory, based on laser-written waveguides in rare-earth-doped crystals. The coherence properties of the optically active ions persist after micromachining, enabling proof-of-principle light storage using the full atomic-frequency-comb protocol. This is a pioneering demonstration of on-demand optical memory on a chip.