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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Optimal quantum storage of broadband single photons

Joshua Nunn, F. C. Waldermann, Karl Surmacz, Z. Wang, D. Jaksch, Ian A. Walmsley

Published Jun 1, 2007• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. The authors present a theoretical analysis of a quantum memory which shows how to efficiently transfer an ultrashort single photon wavepacket to a long-lived collective excitation of an ensemble of absorbers with the well-known three level Lambda-structure, by application of an ancillary control field. We describe a general prescription for optimizing the efficiency of the storage process for arbitrary detunings, and then we show how the dynamics simplify in the off-resonant limit. In this case spontaneous emission losses are eliminated and the interaction becomes unitary; being characterized by a universal mode decomposition.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-iqec.2007.4386911

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Summary form only given. The authors present a theoretical analysis of a quantum memory which shows how to efficiently transfer an ultrashort single photon wavepacket to a long-lived collective excitation of an ensemble of absorbers with the well-known three level Lambda-structure, by application of an ancillary control field. We describe a general prescription for optimizing the efficiency of the storage process for arbitrary detunings, and then we show how the dynamics simplify in the off-resonant limit. In this case spontaneous emission losses are eliminated and the interaction becomes unitary; being characterized by a universal mode decomposition.
Summary form only given. The authors present a theoretical analysis of a quantum memory which shows how to efficiently transfer an ultrashort single photon wavepacket to a long-lived collective excitation of an ensemble of absorbers with the well-known three level Lambda-structure, by application of an ancillary control field. We describe a general prescription for optimizing the efficiency of the storage process for arbitrary detunings, and then we show how the dynamics simplify in the off-resonant limit. In this case spontaneous emission losses are eliminated and the interaction becomes unitary; being characterized by a universal mode decomposition.
We analyze a quantum optical memory based on the off-resonant Raman interaction of a single broadband photon, copropagating with a classical control pulse, with an atomic ensemble. The conditions under which the memory can perform optimally are found, by means of a universal mode decomposition. This enables the memory efficiency to be specified in terms of a single parameter, and the control field pulse shape to be determined via a simple nonlinear scaling. We apply the same decomposition to determine the optimal configurations for read-out.
We theoretically analyze the efficiency of a quantum memory for single photons. The photons propagate along a transmission line and impinge on one of the mirrors of a high-finesse cavity. The quantum memory is constituted by a single atom within the optical resonator. Photon storage is realized by the controlled transfer of the photonic excitation into a metastable state of the atom and occurs via a Raman transition with a suitably tailored laser pulse, which drives the atom. Our study is supported by numerical simulations, in which we include the modes of the transmission line and we use the experimental parameters of existing experimental setups. It reproduces the results derived using input–output theory in the corresponding regimes and can be extended to compute dynamics where the input–output formalism cannot be straightforwardly applied. Our analysis determines the maximal storage efficiency, namely, the maximal probability to store the photon in a stable atomic excitation, in the presence of spontaneous decay and cavity parasitic losses. It further delivers the form of the laser pulse that achieves the maximal efficiency by partially compensating parasitic losses. We numerically assess the conditions under which storage based on adiabatic dynamics is preferable to non-adiabatic pulses. Moreover, we systematically determine the shortest photon pulse that can be efficiently stored as a function of the system parameters.
Optical quantum memory, the ability to store photonic quantum states and retrieve them on demand, is an essential resource for emerging quantum technologies and photonic quantum information protocols. Simultaneously achieving high efficiency and high-speed, broadband operation is an important task necessary for enabling these applications. We investigate the optimization of a large class of optical quantum memories based on resonant and near-resonant interaction with ensembles of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-type level systems with the restriction that the temporal envelope of all optical fields must be Gaussian, which reduces experimental complexity. Through this optimization we demonstrate an experimentally simple path to saturation of the protocol-independent storage efficiency bound that is valid for a wide range of memory bandwidths, including those that are broadband and high speed. Examining the resulting optimal Gaussian control field parameters, we find a continuous transformation between three physically distinct resonant quantum memory protocols. We compare this Gaussian optimization scheme with standard shape-based optimization.
We propose a composite frequency-scalable quantum memory (QM) scheme based on a system of coupled resonators with single atoms capable of efficient storage of the quantum states of broadband single-photon fields having an arbitrary time form. The analyzed QM consists of 8 high-Q miniresonators coupled to a common resonator that is connected to the external waveguide, where each miniresonator contains a single atom. Based on the methods of optimization of the transfer function, we found the optimal parameters of the QM scheme at which an efficient transfer of a photon wave packet from an external waveguide to the atoms is possible for efficient long-term storage in long-lived atomic states. Various functional modes of using the memory circuit are described and ways to increase efficiency for its use in quantum processing are discussed.
We analyse the off-resonant Raman interaction of a single broadband photon, copropagating with a classical `control' pulse, with an atomic ensemble. It is shown that the classical electrodynamical structure of the interaction guarantees canonical evolution of the quantum mechanical field operators. This allows the interaction to be decomposed as a beamsplitter transformation between optical and material excitations on a mode-by-mode basis. A single, dominant modefunction describes the dynamics for arbitrary control pulse shapes. Complete transfer of the quantum state of the incident photon to a collective dark state within the ensemble can be achieved by shaping the control pulse so as to match the dominant mode to the temporal mode of the photon. Readout of the material excitation, back to the optical field, is considered in the context of the symmetry connecting the input and output modes. Finally, we show that the transverse spatial structure of the interaction is characterised by the same mode decomposition.