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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

An Integrated Optical Memory Based on Laser Written Waveguides

Margherita Mazzera, Giacomo Corrielli, Alessandro Seri, Roberto Osellame, Hugues de Riedmatten

Published Jan 1, 2016• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a new platform for integrated optical memory based on laser written waveguides in rare-earth doped crystals. We show that the waveguide fabrication does not degrade the coherence properties of the medium and we demonstrate the first on-demand integrated optical memory.
DOI
10.1364/cleo_qels.2016.fm4c.1

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Quantum memory is the core device for the construction of large-scale quantum networks. For scalable and convenient practical applications, integrated optical memories, especially on-chip optical memories, are crucial requirements because they can be easily integrated with other on-chip devices. Here, we report the coherent optical memory based on a type-IV waveguide fabricated on the surface of a rare-earth ion-doped crystal (i.e., Eu3+\mathrm{E}{\mathrm{u}}^{3+}Eu3+:Y2SiO5{\mathrm{Y}}_{2}\mathrm{Si}{\mathrm{O}}_{5}Y2​SiO5​). The properties of the optical transition (${}^{7}{\mathrm{F}}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{}^{5}{\mathrm{D}}_{0}$) of the Eu3+{\mathrm{Eu}}^{3+}Eu3+ ions inside the surface waveguide are well preserved compared to those of the bulk crystal. Spin-wave atomic frequency comb storage is demonstrated inside the type-IV waveguide. The reliability of this device is confirmed by the high interference visibility of $97\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1\mathrm{%}$ between the retrieval pulse and the reference pulse. The developed on-chip optical memory paves the way towards integrated quantum nodes.