Interaction of quantum radiation with multi-particle ensembles has sparked off intense research efforts during the past decade. Emblematic of this field is the quantum memory scheme, where a quantum state of light is mapped onto an ensemble of atoms and then recovered in its original shape. While opening new access to the basics of light–atom interaction, quantum memory also appears as a key element for information processing applications, such as linear optics quantum computation and long-distance quantum communication via quantum repeaters. Not surprisingly, it is far from trivial to practically recover a stored quantum state of light and, although impressive progress has already been accomplished, researchers are still struggling to reach this ambitious objective. This special issue provides an account of the state-of-the-art in a fast-moving research area that makes physicists, engineers and chemists work together at the forefront of their discipline, involving quantum fields and atoms in different media, magnetic resonance techniques and material science. Various strategies have been considered to store and retrieve quantum light. The explored designs belong to three main—while still overlapping—classes. In architectures derived from photon echo, information is mapped over the spectral components of inhomogeneously broadened absorption bands, such as those encountered in rare earth ion doped crystals and atomic gases in external gradient magnetic field. Protocols based on electromagnetic induced transparency also rely on resonant excitation and are ideally suited to the homogeneous absorption lines offered by laser cooled atomic clouds or ion Coulomb crystals. Finally off-resonance approaches are illustrated by Faraday and Raman processes. Coupling with an optical cavity may enhance the storage process, even for negligibly small atom number. Multiple scattering is also proposed as a way to enlarge the quantum interaction distance of light with matter. The quest for higher efficiency, better fidelity, broader bandwidth, multimode capacity and longer storage lifetime is pursued in all those approaches, as shown in this special issue. The improvement of quantum memory operation specifically requires in-depth study and control of numerous physical processes leading to atomic decoherence. The present issue reflects the development of rare earth ion doped matrices offering long lifetime superposition states, either as bulk crystals or as optical waveguides. The need for quantum sources and high efficiency detectors at the single photon level is also illustrated. Several papers address the networking of quantum memories either in long-haul cryptography or in the prospect of quantum processing. In this context, much attention has been paid recently to interfacing quantum light with superconducting qubits and with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Finally, the quantum interfacing of light with matter raises questions on entanglement. The last two papers are devoted to the generation of entanglement by dissipative processes. It is shown that long lifetime entanglement may be built in this way. We hope this special issue will help readers to become familiar with the exciting field of ensemble-based quantum memories and will stimulate them to bring deeper insights and new ideas to this area.
Interaction of quantum radiation with multi-particle ensembles has sparked off intense research efforts during the past decade. Emblematic of this field is the quantum memory scheme, where a quantum state of light is mapped onto an ensemble of atoms and then recovered in its original shape. While opening new access to the basics of light–atom interaction, quantum memory also appears as a key element for information processing applications, such as linear optics quantum computation and long-distance quantum communication via quantum repeaters. Not surprisingly, it is far from trivial to practically recover a stored quantum state of light and, although impressive progress has already been accomplished, researchers are still struggling to reach this ambitious objective. This special issue provides an account of the state-of-the-art in a fast-moving research area that makes physicists, engineers and chemists work together at the forefront of their discipline, involving quantum fields and atoms in different media, magnetic resonance techniques and material science. Various strategies have been considered to store and retrieve quantum light. The explored designs belong to three main—while still overlapping—classes. In architectures derived from photon echo, information is mapped over the spectral components of inhomogeneously broadened absorption bands, such as those encountered in rare earth ion doped crystals and atomic gases in external gradient magnetic field. Protocols based on electromagnetic induced transparency also rely on resonant excitation and are ideally suited to the homogeneous absorption lines offered by laser cooled atomic clouds or ion Coulomb crystals. Finally off-resonance approaches are illustrated by Faraday and Raman processes. Coupling with an optical cavity may enhance the storage process, even for negligibly small atom number. Multiple scattering is also proposed as a way to enlarge the quantum interaction distance of light with matter. The quest for higher efficiency, better fidelity, broader bandwidth, multimode capacity and longer storage lifetime is pursued in all those approaches, as shown in this special issue. The improvement of quantum memory operation specifically requires in-depth study and control of numerous physical processes leading to atomic decoherence. The present issue reflects the development of rare earth ion doped matrices offering long lifetime superposition states, either as bulk crystals or as optical waveguides. The need for quantum sources and high efficiency detectors at the single photon level is also illustrated. Several papers address the networking of quantum memories either in long-haul cryptography or in the prospect of quantum processing. In this context, much attention has been paid recently to interfacing quantum light with superconducting qubits and with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Finally, the quantum interfacing of light with matter raises questions on entanglement. The last two papers are devoted to the generation of entanglement by dissipative processes. It is shown that long lifetime entanglement may be built in this way. We hope this special issue will help readers to become familiar with the exciting field of ensemble-based quantum memories and will stimulate them to bring deeper insights and new ideas to this area.
Light is the best carrier of information in quantum network. By exploring the interaction of light with matter, quantum memory technology can be further developed. Quantum memory can simultaneously receive and obtain optical quantum information on demand, which is the basis for establishing large-scale quantum computing and long-distance quantum communication. However, the performance of quantum memory directly affects its practical application process and the progress of quantum information technology. In the past two decades, quantum memory in various physical systems and quantum information protocols has been intensively studied, its performance has been significantly improved, and its relevant applications have been widely demonstrated. In this paper, we firstly sort the research progress of quantum memory metrics in the past ten years, and discuss the development of efficiency, lifetime, fidelity and mode capacity in detail according to the characteristics of cold atom systems and solid-state doped ion crystal systems. Secondly, the recent typical applications of quantum memory in quantum entanglement, memory-enhanced multi-photon processes, and quantum interference of different particles are introduced. Finally, the future development of quantum storage is prospected and summarized.
This thesis demonstrates an efficient quantum memory that for the first time preserves more quantum information than it loses. Beyond this, it describes how even higher efficiency may be realised without sacrificing the other performance characteristics that are required for a practical device. A quantum memory is a device to store and recall the quantum state of light. Such a memory will be required for most applications of the emerging field of quantum information. The closest practical application is quantum repeaters for long distance encryption. A more distant target is quantum computing. Yet demonstrations of quantum memory to date fall far short of the performance required for repeaters, and further short of that for quantum computing. For these applications, high performance will be required in terms of 3 parameters: long storage time, high efficiency, and a large mode-capacity. Prior to this work, the storage time was the only paramter to have been demonstrated near the required level[1], and that only in a classical regime. The primary result of this thesis is to demonst rate a memory with an efficiency close the required level (70% is measured), and confirm its quantum nature with noise measurements. This represents the first quantum memory with efficiency greater than 50% and the first to operate unconditionally above the "no-cloning limit". The demonstration used the same storage medium as for the previous long-term storage experiment (Pr{u00B3}{u207A}:Y{u2082}Si0{u2085} (PrYSO)), and could in principle reach the same long storage times. The technique used is an optical "gradient echo", an optical equivalent to the long studied gradient echo technique used in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). Aside from it's practicality for demonstrations, a gradient-echo also offers a powerful handle for manipulating stored light. However it is more complex than related memory techniques because it employs a spatially-varying medium. This becomes crucial when the optical depth (and memory efficiency) is increased; propagation effects mean the light is stored very differently than in other techniques. A simple linear-response model is used to gain insight into this high optical depth regime. As a result, some new properties are identified which may increase the efficiency in practical circumstances and improve flexibility. Of particular note, it's found that the space-dependence can be used to hide one narrow transition with another. This allows the somewhat unintuitive notion that a light pulse can fully traverse a medium without exciting a transition that it is resonant with. The spectral-hiding property has promise to overcome the problem with simultaneously acheiving all three parameters required for quantum memories. The problem is related to the preparation of available rare-earth ion doped materials. To acheive high efficiency and storage times, these require spectral holeburning whose bandwidth is limited by the splittings of spin levels. Methods exist to create high bandwidth delays lines with holeburning[2], but they cannot be efficient or long-lived. By utilising the spectral-hiding property of the gradient echo, methods to overcome this limitation are described for the first time.
The ability of storing and retrieving quantum states of light is an important experimental challenge in quantum information science. A powerful quantum memory for light is required in a quantum repeater, which would allow long distance (>500km) quantum communications. To be implemented in such application, the quantum memory must allow on-demand readout, with high fidelity and efficiency, and a long storage time. Additionally a multimode capacity (for temporal or spatial modes) would allow multiplexing. Our approaches focus on rare-earth doped crystals, i.e. solid state quantum memory. I present, in this work, our contributions for a solid-state quantum storage, with good performances in every criteria. In particular, I present the preservation of quantum entanglement during the storage, which paves the way for the implementation of quantum memories in quantum repeaters.
The faithful storage and coherent manipulation of single photon state in a matter-system are crucial for linear-optical quantum computation, long-distance quantum communication, and quantum networking.To reach useful data rate in a large-scale quantum network, highly multimode quantum memories are required to build a multiplexed quantum repeater.Rare-earth-ion doped crystal (REIC) is very promising material as a candidate for multimode quantum storage due to the wide inhomogeneous broadening and long optical coherence time.In this article, we review the recent advances in multimode quantum memories based on REICs.First, we briefly introduce the properties of REIC and the atomic frequency comb protocol based on REIC.Next, we review the achievements of multimode quantum memories based on REIC in recent years, including frequency, temporal and spatial multimode storage.Afterwards, we review our experimental work on multiplexed storage based on a multiple degree-of-freedom quantum memory.Finally, we introduce the quantum mode converter and real-time arbitrary manipulations based on the multiple degree-of-freedom quantum memory. The combination of storage and real-time manipulation in a device should enable the construction of a versatility quantum repeater.This review highlights that multimode quantum memories based on REIC can be found to possess some practical applications in developing the optical quantum information processing in the near future.
Quantum memories are essential for quantum information processing and long-distance quantum communication. The field has recently seen a lot of progress, and the present focus issue offers a glimpse of these developments, showing both experimental and theoretical results from many of the leading groups around the world. On the experimental side, it shows work on cold gases, warm vapors, rare-earth ion doped crystals and single atoms. On the theoretical side there are in-depth studies of existing memory protocols, proposals for new protocols including approaches based on quantum error correction, and proposals for new applications of quantum storage. Looking forward, we anticipate many more exciting results in this area.
The emergence of quantum physics from the page to the lab and the world at large is an exciting development of recent years. The prospects of absolutely secure communication and efficient simulation of physical systems have spurred great human effort into understanding these possibilities and turning them into realities. Photons are the most easily manipulated quantum particles and are a promising candidate for implementing these technologies. Limitations of photons include the difficulty of keeping objects that move at the speed of light, and producing strong interactions between particles that do not normally interact. The work presented in this thesis is motivated by the possibility of overcoming these limitations. The ability to faithfully store and reproduce a quantum state is essential for many quantum information technologies. Quantum memories for light have been developed over the last two decades to provide this ability. The group at the Australian National University developed the gradient echo memory (GEM): A quantum state of light can be controllably stored and released from an atomic ensemble by the use of additional optical fields and magnetic field gradients. This scheme was previously shown to preserve the quantum characteristics of the light. We used the GEM scheme with a cold rubidium ensemble to create the first optical memory that simultaneously beat the no-cloning limit, a benchmark for many of the technologies relying on quantum memories, and the loss rate for a delay line composed of optical fibre. We also created an analogue to a pulsed optical resonator using GEM with a warm rubidium vapour. This was done by replacing the circulating optical field of a resonator with light stored in the memory, and replacing the coupling of light into and out of that circulating mode with storage and recall from the memory. The bandwidth and repetition rate of this resonator were rapidly tunable as they were controlled by external optical and magnetic fields. We worked on implementing GEM with strings of thousands of atoms strongly coupled to the evanescent field of an optical nanofibre. This raised new possibilities for creating a true random access memory that would allow a more flexible use of the multi-mode capacity of GEM. We developed the theory for a novel type of stationary light in the gradient echo memory. Our stationary light scheme relies on the destructive interference of counter-propagating optical fields throughout the memory. The optical intensity scales with optical depth, as with other forms of stationary light. However, as the destructive interference could be set up over a much greater distance, more of the optical depth is available for generating stationary light. Finally, we studied how a control-phase gate for single-photon optical states could be implemented using a nonlinear interaction with stationary light. The stationary light generated by one state modulates the phase of another state stored in the memory. The second state modifies the stationary light, also producing a back-action on the first state and generating the required cross-phase shift.