Controlled Transport of Stored Light

Open Access

Controlled Transport of Stored Light

Wei Li, Parvez Islam, and Patrick Windpassinger

Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 150501 – Published 8 October 2020

Abstract

Controlled manipulation, storage, and retrieval of quantum information is essential for quantum communication and computing. Quantum memories for light, realized with cold atomic samples as the storage medium, are prominent for their high storage efficiencies and lifetime. We demonstrate the controlled transport of stored light over 1.2 mm in such a storage system and show that the transport process and its dynamics only have a minor effect on the coherence of the storage. Extending the presented concept to longer transport distances and augmenting the number of storage sections will allow for the development of novel quantum devices such as optical racetrack memories or optical quantum registers.

Received 20 March 2020
Accepted 26 August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.150501

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Electromagnetically induced transparency Quantum memories Quantum optics Quantum repeaters

Atomic ensemble

Quantum Information, Science & TechnologyAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Wei Li ^1,2, Parvez Islam ², and Patrick Windpassinger^2,*

¹School of Instrumentation and Optoelectronic Engineering, Beihang University, 100191 Beijing, China
²Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55122 Mainz, Germany

^*Corresponding author. windpass@uni-mainz.de

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Issue

Vol. 125, Iss. 15 — 9 October 2020

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Images

Figure 1
Experimental details. (a) Experimental setup. HW: half wave plate. DM: dichroic mirror. BPF: bandpass filter. PBS: polarizing beam splitter. PD: photodiode. RM: reflection mirror. FC: fiber coupler. SMF: single-mode fiber. PMT: photomultiplier tube. MOT: magneto-optical trap. A 10-cm-long HC-PCF with a core diameter of $60 μ m$ and mode field diameter of $42 μ m$ is installed inside the vacuum chamber [39]. The 3D MOT is located 6.3 mm in front of the fiber tip. The inset panel shows typical absorption images of the trapped atoms at the MOT position, transported by 3.3 mm and 6.3 mm, respectively. (b) Energy levels of the ${}^{87}{Rb}$ $D 2$ line relevant for the experiment. (c) Typical experimental protocol for transport and storage. The thick vertical dashed line indicates the time when the cold atoms reach the fiber tip. (d) Light storage and retrieval inside the HC-PCF. T: storage time. The reference and leakage pulses are scaled by 0.5. The $x$ axis is not to scale. For simplicity, the retrieved pulses of independent experimental runs with different storage times are plotted in the same figure and only the control beam (depicted as dashed lines, not to scale) for the storage time $T = 5 μ s$ is shown. Each of the pulses are averaged results of eight experimental runs.
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Figure 2
Transport of stored light inside HC-PCF. (a) Typical protocol for transporting stored light with transporting time of 3.1 ms. The yellow and red shadows to the left represent the reference and leakage pulse scaled by 0.25, respectively. The gray shaded area indicates the transport of the stored light, and the transport speed is shown on the right axis. In red to the right is the retrieved light pulse after being transported. The control beam is depicted as the dashed lines (not to scale). (b) Storage efficiency for retrieval after different transport distances. Each data point is an average of eight independent runs of the experiment. Error bars represent statistical errors, which are 1 standard deviation. The solid line shows the fit results of the exponential function $\exp (- t / τ)$ .
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Figure 3
Transport of stored light through the interface between free space and HC-PCF. (a) Storage efficiency for transporting stored light from free space into the HC-PCF. The gray shaded area indicates the fiber position. (b) Storage efficiency for transporting stored light out of the HC-PCF. (c) Storage efficiency for light in a comoving atomic ensemble inside the HC-PCF. Each data point is an average of eight independent runs of the experiment. Error bars represent statistical errors, which are 1 standard deviation.. The solid line shows the fit results of the exponential function $\exp (- t / τ)$ .
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