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National Conference on Laser Technology and Optoelectronics (LTO)

Manipulating flying and stored light quanta with laser cooled atomic ensembles

Xingchang Wang, Liang Dong, Georgios A. Siviloglou, Ying Zuo, J. F. Chen

Published Aug 26, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Laser cooled atomic ensembles provide a promising platform for realizing quantum repeaters, due to their capacity to manipulate flying and stored light quanta efficiently. We generate single-photon Airy bullets in a laser cooled atomic ensemble by completely shaping a single photon in the spatial and temporal dimensions. On the other hand, in our latest work, we have found that the synthetic magnetic fields generated by a far detuned AC-Stark beam applied to the atomic ensemble can compensate for the temporal fluctuations and spatial inhomogeneities typically originating from stray magnetic fields.

DOI
10.1117/12.3077660

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Laser cooled atomic ensembles provide a promising platform for realizing quantum repeaters, due to their capacity to manipulate flying and stored light quanta efficiently. We generate single-photon Airy bullets in a laser cooled atomic ensemble by completely shaping a single photon in the spatial and temporal dimensions. On the other hand, in our latest work, we have found that the synthetic magnetic fields generated by a far detuned AC-Stark beam applied to the atomic ensemble can compensate for the temporal fluctuations and spatial inhomogeneities typically originating from stray magnetic fields.
In this paper, we have demonstrated that optically generated fictitious magnetic fields can be utilized to extend the lifetime of quantum memories in cold atomic ensembles. All the degrees of freedom of an AC Stark shift, such as polarization, spatial profile, and temporal waveform, can be readily controlled in a precise manner. Temporal fluctuations over several experimental cycles and spatial inhomogeneities along a cold atomic gas have been compensated by an optical beam. The advantage of employing fictitious magnetic fields for quantum storage lies in the speed and spatial precision with which these fields can be synthesized. Our simple and versatile technique can find widespread application in coherent pulse and single-photon storage across various atomic species. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Uninhibited control of the complex spatiotemporal quantum wave function of a single photon has so far remained elusive even though it can dramatically increase the encoding flexibility and thus the information capacity of a photonic quantum link. By fusing temporal waveform generation in an atomic ensemble and spatial single-photon shaping, we hereby demonstrate for the first time complete spatiotemporal control of a propagation invariant (2+1)D Airy single-photon optical bullet. These correlated photons are not only self-accelerating and impervious to spreading as their classical counterparts, but can be concealed and revealed in the presence of strong classical stray light.
Microscopically controlled neutral atoms in optical tweezers and lattices have led to exciting advances in the study of quantum information and quantum many-body systems. The light shifts of atomic levels from the trapping potential in these systems can result in detrimental effects such as fluctuating dipole force heating, inhomogeneous detunings, and inhibition of laser cooling, which limits the atomic species that can be manipulated. In particular, these light shifts can be large enough to prevent loading into optical tweezers directly from a magneto-optical trap. We implement a general solution to these limitations by loading, as well as cooling and imaging the atoms with temporally alternating beams, and present an analysis of the role of heating and required cooling for single atom tweezer loading. Because this technique does not depend on any specific spectral properties, it should enable the optical tweezer platform to be extended to nearly any atomic or molecular species that can be laser cooled and optically trapped.
Effective and unrestricted engineering of atom-photon interactions requires precise spatially resolved control of light beams. The significant potential of such manipulations lies in a set of disciplines ranging from solid-state to atomic physics. Here we use a Zeeman-like ac-Stark shift caused by a shaped laser beam to perform rotations of spins with spatial resolution in a large ensemble of cold rubidium atoms. We show that inhomogeneities of light intensity are the main source of dephasing and, thus, decoherence; yet, with proper beam shaping, this deleterious effect is strongly mitigated allowing rotations of 15 rad within one spin-precession lifetime. Finally, as a particular example of a complex manipulation enabled by our scheme, we demonstrate a range of collapse-and-revival behaviors of a free-induction decay signal by imprinting comb-like patterns on the atomic ensemble.
Future quantum repeater architectures, capable of efficiently distributing information encoded in quantum states of light over large distances, will benefit from multiplexed photonic quantum memories. In this work we demonstrate a temporally multiplexed quantum repeater node in a laser-cooled cloud of ^{87}Rb atoms. We employ the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller protocol where pairs of photons and single collective spin excitations (so-called spin waves) are created in several temporal modes using a train of write pulses. To make the spin waves created in different temporal modes distinguishable and enable selective readout, we control the dephasing and rephasing of the spin waves by a magnetic field gradient, which induces a controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening of the involved atomic hyperfine levels. We demonstrate that by embedding the atomic ensemble inside a low finesse optical cavity, the additional noise generated in multimode operation is strongly suppressed. By employing feed forward readout, we demonstrate distinguishable retrieval of up to 10 temporal modes. For each mode, we prove nonclassical correlations between the first and second photon. Furthermore, an enhancement in rates of correlated photon pairs is observed as we increase the number of temporal modes stored in the memory. The reported capability is a key element of a quantum repeater architecture based on multiplexed quantum memories.