2015/01/31 by Mustafa Gündoğan, Patrick M. Ledingham, Kutlu Kutluer +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.114.230501
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 230501 (2015) · 10 pages, 10 figures
arxiv created 2015/06/15 · arxiv updated 2015/06/17
We demonstrate the first solid-state spin-wave optical quantum memory with on-demand read-out. Using the full atomic frequency comb scheme in a \PrYSO crystal, we store weak coherent pulses at the single-photon level with a signal to noise ratio > 10. Narrow-band spectral filtering based on spectral hole burning in a second \PrYSO crystal is used to filter out the excess noise created by control pulses to reach an unconditional noise level of (2.0 ± 0.3) ×10-3 photons per pulse. We also report spin-wave storage of photonic time-bin qubits with conditional fidelities higher than a measure and prepare strategy, demonstrating that the spin-wave memory operates in the quantum regime. This makes our device the first demonstration of a quantum memory for time-bin qubits, with on demand read-out of the stored quantum information. These results represent an important step for the use of solid-state quantum memories in scalable quantum networks.