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Modern Physics Letters A

Dynamics of collective excitation transfer in multimode quantum memories using multiple rapid adiabatic pulses

Ao-Lin Guo, Zhengliang Liu, Hao Wu, Honglin Yao, Yuan Ren

Published Sep 26, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Multimode quantum memories are fundamental building blocks for quantum communication and networks, storing photonic quantum states in long-lived atomic spin excitations. However, their performance critically hinges on the efficiency of collective excitation transfer between photonic and spin states. Here, we theoretically and numerically investigate the dynamics of adiabatic pulses during this transfer process in atomic frequency comb-spin wave memories, comparing the standard Landau–Zener pulse, Roland–Cerf pulse and transitionless adiabatic control. We demonstrate highly efficient collective excitation transfer that is robust against variations in control-pulse amplitude and duration. Crucially, our protocol achieves rapid transfer — enhancing the capacity for stored modes — while preserving the coherence of superposition states. These results advance the development of high-fidelity, efficient manipulation in multimode quantum memories.

DOI
10.1142/s0217732325501755

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Multimode quantum memories are fundamental building blocks for quantum communication and networks, storing photonic quantum states in long-lived atomic spin excitations. However, their performance critically hinges on the efficiency of collective excitation transfer between photonic and spin states. Here, we theoretically and numerically investigate the dynamics of adiabatic pulses during this transfer process in atomic frequency comb-spin wave memories, comparing the standard Landau–Zener pulse, Roland–Cerf pulse and transitionless adiabatic control. We demonstrate highly efficient collective excitation transfer that is robust against variations in control-pulse amplitude and duration. Crucially, our protocol achieves rapid transfer — enhancing the capacity for stored modes — while preserving the coherence of superposition states. These results advance the development of high-fidelity, efficient manipulation in multimode quantum memories.
Quantum memories are building blocks for a variety of quantum technologies. However, the collective transfer between optical excitations and spin-wave excitations determines the performance of the quantum memory. Here we propose a method for collective excitations transfer with high efficiency and fidelity in a multimode quantum memory. The pulse uses modulations of the control parameters to cancel the nonadiabatic transitions during the evolution. We demonstrate the universality of the control pulse by simulations for an atomic frequency comb spin-wave quantum memory. The protocol is robust to various experimental imperfections in the pulse amplitude and duration. The protocol also allows one to achieve high multiplexed storage at small cost on efficiency reduction. The protocol is particularly useful in retaining the phase coherence since the environment dissipation would decohere the system. These results pave a way for efficient and robust coherent manipulations in a multiplexed quantum memory.
High performance quantum networks require extensive utilization of multiplexing techniques, relaying on photonic spatial and temporal structure. Multimode quantum memories for light, where photons are stored in the form of collective atomic excitations, may constitute building blocks of such networks; however, a requirement arises to implement complex linear operations on the stored excitations. In our photonic processor we experimentally demonstrate how the off-resonant ac-Stark shift (ACS) may be employed to manipulate the spatial and temporal structure of photons stored in a highly multimode quantum memory as the collective atomic excitations – spin waves.
It has been shown that an inhomogeneously broadened optical transition shaped into an atomic frequency comb can store a large number of temporal modes of the electromagnetic field at the single-photon level without the need to increase the optical depth of the storage material. The readout of light modes is made efficient thanks to the rephasing of the optical-wavelength coherence similar to photon-echo-type techniques, and the reemission time is given by the comb structure. For on-demand readout and long storage times, two control fields are used to transfer the optical coherence back and forth into a spin wave. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the spin-wave storage based on chirped adiabatic control fields. In particular, we verify that chirped fields require significantly weaker intensities than $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses. The price to pay is a reduction of the multimode storage capacity that we quantify for realistic material parameters associated with solids doped with rare-earth-metal ions.
Multi-mode quantum memory is a basic element required for long-distance quantum communication, as well as scalable quantum computation. For on-demand readout and long storage times, control pulses are crucial in order to transfer atomic excitations back and forth into spin excitations. Here, we introduce noise-robust composite pulse sequences for high-fidelity excitation transfer in multi-mode quantum memory. These pulses are robust to the deviations in amplitude and the detuning parameters of realistic conditions. We show the efficiency of these composite pulses with a typical rare-earth ion-doped system. This approach could be applied to a variety of quantum memory schemes.
Faithfully storing an unknown quantum light state is essential to advanced quantum communication and distributed quantum computation applications. The required quantum memory must have high fidelity to improve the performance of a quantum network. Here we report the reversible transfer of photonic polarization states into collective atomic excitation in a compact solid-state device. The quantum memory is based on an atomic frequency comb (AFC) in rare-earth ion-doped crystals. We obtain up to 0.999 process fidelity for the storage and retrieval process of single-photon-level coherent pulse. This reliable quantum memory is a crucial step toward quantum networks based on solid-state devices.
Abstract Ensemble-based quantum memories are key to developing multiplexed quantum repeaters, able to overcome the intrinsic rate limitation imposed by finite communication times over long distances. Rare-earth ion doped crystals are main candidates for highly multimode quantum memories, where time, frequency and spatial multiplexing can be exploited to store multiple modes. In this context the atomic frequency comb (AFC) quantum memory provides large temporal multimode capacity, which can readily be combined with multiplexing in frequency and space. In this article, we derive theoretical formulas for quantifying the temporal multimode capacity of AFC-based memories, for both optical memories with fixed storage time and spin-wave memories with longer storage times and on-demand read out. The temporal multimode capacity is expressed in key memory parameters, such as AFC bandwidth, fixed-delay storage time, memory efficiency, and control field Rabi frequency. Current experiments in europium- and praseodymium-doped Y2SiO5 are analyzed within this theoretical framework, which is also tested with newly acquired data, as prospects for higher temporal capacity in these materials are considered. In addition we consider the possibility of spectral and spatial multiplexing to further increase the mode capacity, with examples given for praseodymium doped Y2SiO5.