The fields of astronomy and quantum photonics are united by a need to manage very small numbers of photons. In particular, for astronomy in order to extend very long baseline interferometers to the infrared and optical, would require very low loss optical connections spanning several 100 km. It is here where the developments in quantum technologies may provide the solution. With quantum memories demonstrating coherence times of several hours, it may be possible to transport photons stored in such a memory over distances up to hundreds of kilometres, with minimal loss and infrastructure investment. This thesis seeks to explore some of the challenges that may arise when implementing such a scheme. The most critical to the implementation of an hour long lifetime quantum memory is the precise control of the magnetic field environment. This thesis makes a numerical study of locating field insensitive points, as well as an experimental study of the underlying structure for efficient searches and what regimes to target in future experiments. Transporting a quantum hard drive will also be limited by the memory’s sensitivity to the forces associated with moving it. This thesis details a scheme to measure the piezospectroscopic response of Er:Y2SiO5 finding the tensor component along the b-axis to be 35±2 kHz/kPa. This value indicates that Er:Y2SiO5 may be less susceptible to vibrations than similar rare-earth materials, and that passive vibration damping is likely sufficient. Finally, this thesis explores the problem of filtering noise photons that lie outside the spectrally narrow storage regions. Fibre Bragg grating (FBG) filters are explored, with fabricated devices achieving maximum attenuations of 127.6±0.3 dB, with less than 1 dB of insertion loss. Measurements of narrow filters with O(10 kHz) bandwidths are also discussed. Overall FBG’s have proven to be both high performance, and highly customisable indicating they are suitable for use in a QHD.
The fields of astronomy and quantum photonics are united by a need to manage very small numbers of photons. In particular, for astronomy in order to extend very long baseline interferometers to the infrared and optical, would require very low loss optical connections spanning several 100 km. It is here where the developments in quantum technologies may provide the solution. With quantum memories demonstrating coherence times of several hours, it may be possible to transport photons stored in such a memory over distances up to hundreds of kilometres, with minimal loss and infrastructure investment. This thesis seeks to explore some of the challenges that may arise when implementing such a scheme. The most critical to the implementation of an hour long lifetime quantum memory is the precise control of the magnetic field environment. This thesis makes a numerical study of locating field insensitive points, as well as an experimental study of the underlying structure for efficient searches and what regimes to target in future experiments. Transporting a quantum hard drive will also be limited by the memory’s sensitivity to the forces associated with moving it. This thesis details a scheme to measure the piezospectroscopic response of Er:Y2SiO5 finding the tensor component along the b-axis to be 35±2 kHz/kPa. This value indicates that Er:Y2SiO5 may be less susceptible to vibrations than similar rare-earth materials, and that passive vibration damping is likely sufficient. Finally, this thesis explores the problem of filtering noise photons that lie outside the spectrally narrow storage regions. Fibre Bragg grating (FBG) filters are explored, with fabricated devices achieving maximum attenuations of 127.6±0.3 dB, with less than 1 dB of insertion loss. Measurements of narrow filters with O(10 kHz) bandwidths are also discussed. Overall FBG’s have proven to be both high performance, and highly customisable indicating they are suitable for use in a QHD.
Efficient and low-noise distribution of photons is essential for quantum technology networks. Current strategies focus on low-loss distribution channels or the use of quantum repeaters. I will present a surprising alternate strategy: transporting photons stored in a quantum hard drive. Recent results demonstrate the potential for such a device in rare-earth ion crystals with coherence lifetimes greater than 6 hours. With a sufficiently high photonic storage capacity, quantum hard drives will enable new regimes of science, such as optical astronomy below 1 µas resolution using very long baseline interferometry.
This thesis describes experiments aimed at developing a key component in applications such as quantum networks and long-distance quantum communication systems: quantum memories. Quantum memories for light using photon-echo and coherent rephrasing techniques have been developed. The work is carried out on rare-earth-ion-doped inorganic crystals. Several properties are associated with these crystals such as long coherence times and long-lived ground state sublevels that are particularly interesting in connection applications in the area of quantum information science. It is demonstrated the preparation of optical inhomogeneous absorption profiles such that the light only interacts with a specific transition at a selected frequency. Narrow absorbing structures with widths of <100 kHz have been prepared with no absorption in the surrounding spectral interval. Most of the experiments were carried out using Pr3+:Y2SiO5. However, in our search for suitable a Λ-system in the material under consideration, we also performed spectral hole-burning spectroscopy in Nd:Y2SiVO4. As part of the search for host materials for Pr, Pr:La2(WO4)3 crystal was characterized using a variety of methods, such as, hole burning and photon-echoes. Electromagnetically induced transparency was also observed in this crystal. The most important criteria for evaluating quantum memory performance and the most important physical requirements are discussed. After investigating the standard photon echo techniques and controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening (CRIB) for quantum state storage, we considered an efficient multimode quantum memory protocol; the atomic frequency comb (AFC) protocol. Combs with peaks of widths 100-300 kHz and an optical depth of~ 10 were created by optical pumping inside an emptied region of the inhomogeneous profile of Pr3+:Y2SiO5, allowing us to improve the efficiency of light storage. Light storage combining a photon-echo technique based on an AFC and spin-wave storage have been demonstrated, and an experimental AFC scheme for the storage of weak coherent light pulses in Pr3+:Y2SiO5 is presented. Finally, we have investigated superradiance and slow light effects. Both these effects occur in the high optical depth regime and can influence the memory performance. Under certain conditions superradiance results in the immediate re-emission of the stored light in a single burst of coherent radiation, and inside spectrally structured materials, slow light effects may result when storage is performed.
Quantum communication founds on the possibility to encode quantum states into photons and allows, for instance, the provable secure distribution of encryption keys. Despite a lot of progress during the past two decades, quantum communication still faces a distance barrier, which can be overcome by quantum repeaters whose currently most challenging ingredient is a memory for quantum states of light. In addition to robustness and ease of use, the requirements for such a quantum memory include high fidelity quantum state storage and the preservation of entanglement, sufficiently long storage time with on-demand recall, high efficiency, large bandwidth, and high multimode capacity. Six years ago, some of these properties had already been demonstrated using atomic vapor. However, practical solid-state memories were virtually unexplored in view of quantum state storage. The main goal of this thesis was to realize a solid-state quantum memory for light with emphasis on meeting requirements for long distance quantum communication. First, we identified a potential material candidate, a thulium doped lithium niobate waveguide, and conducted spectroscopic investigations to assess its suitability for quantum state storage using a photon-echo type approach. Next, we demonstrated that our storage device is suitable for high fidelity quantum state storage and for the storage of photonic entanglement, and that its large spectral multimode capacity allows for on-demand selective recall in conjunction with standard spectral filters and frequency shifters. In addition, by performing two-photon interference experiments and Bell-State measurements, we found that our memory preserves not only quantum information, but, more generally, the entire photonic wave function, which further confirms its suitability for quantum repeaters as well as for linear optics quantum computers. Finally, we showed that our integrated device also allows for general temporal and spectral manipulation of individual quantum optical pulses, which paves the way towards on-chip quantum optical processors. While more work remains to be done, in particular to improve memory efficiency and storage time, the large number of achievements, together with known ways to overcome the remaining obstacles, makes us confident that a quantum memory suitable for quantum repeaters will soon be built.
Quantum information processing has been developing rapidly in the last two decades as a way to overcome the limitations of classical electronics. Several components to generate, process and send quantum information are needed. In this context, optical quantum memories appear as principal components to communicate quantum information at long distances by overcoming the losses of the optical fibers in the so-called quantum repeater scheme. During the last decade several storage protocols to store quantum information have been proposed and tested. In this thesis, I present the Revival of Silenced Echo (ROSE) protocol implemented in an Er3+:Y2SiO5 crystal. This material is a good candidate for a quantum memory because of its transition in the C-band of the telecom wavelengths where the losses in optical fibers are minimized. In this work, I evaluate the ROSE performances with weak classical pulses. I measure efficiency, bandwidth and storage time which are the typical figures of merit for an optical quantum memory. Starting with a fixed bandwidth, I demonstrate experimentally a good efficiency. Additionally, I measure the bandwidth dependence of the protocol. For this latter, the dipole-dipole interactions between erbium ions appears as limiting factors. Finally, I implement the ROSE protocol with a few photons per pulse to show its potential as a quantum memory. I report good efficiencies with a moderate signal to noise ratio.I finish this work with a series of measurements in new materials (doped or codoped with erbium), to extend the processing bandwidth of Er doped samples compatible the telecom wavelength range.
This dissertation is devoted to the development of quantum memories for light. Quantum memory is an important part of future long-distance quantum fiber networks and quantum processing. Quantum memory is required to be efficient, multimode, noise free, scalable, and should be able to provide long storage times for practical applications in quantum communications and beyond. Here I concentrate on solving particular problems of different quantum protocols and find ways for extending the performance of memories and adding new capabilities. I theoretically show that an array of whispering-gallery resonators is capable of being an efficient and noise-free optical memory with an adjustable storage time. The potential for on-chip realization at room temperature makes the scheme attractive for easy implementation. The effect of Raman scattering in echo memory was evaluated experimentally and theoretically. The noise performance of gradient echo memory in Λ configuration proves, that the developed theory is in a good agreement with an experiment. I proposed a mechanism for extending the bandwidth of impedance-matched memories via a white-light cavity effect. The introduced additional dispersion compensates a bandwidth decrease induced by the cavity and hence increases the spectral zone of impedance matching. Theoretically the scheme allows to increase the bandwidth of high efficient storage (>90%) several times without adding extra noise. Finally, I have proposed an architecture of quantum random-access memory for time-bin photons. The architecture consists from a memory unit and a strongly coupled three-level atom. Both of them are placed in their own cavities, which are coupled to each other. The protocol allows to achieve quantum addressing of quantum information stored in the memory with only a single control unit. This is useful for numerous tasks in quantum machine learning.
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.