2015/09/30 by Kutlu Kutluer, M. F. Pascual-Winter, María Florencia Pascual-Winter +8 · 18 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Absorption (acoustics) #Atomic physics #Crystal (programming language) #Excitation #Laser #Noise (video) #Optical storage #Optics #Optoelectronics #Photon #Photonic crystal #Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics #Physics #Pulse (music) #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Raman spectroscopy #Slow light #Spectral hole burning #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.93.040302
published in Physical Review A 93(4) (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 4 figures
openalex publication_date 2016/04/08 · arxiv created 2016/04/27 · arxiv updated 2016/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We demonstrate a solid-state spin-wave optical memory based on stopped light in a spectral hole. A long-lived narrow spectral hole is created by optical pumping in the inhomogeneous absorption profile of a Pr3+:Y2SiO5 crystal. Optical pulses sent through the spectral hole experience a strong reduction of their group velocity and are spatially compressed in the crystal. A short Raman pulse transfers the optical excitation to the spin state before the light pulse exits the crystal, effectively stopping the light. After a controllable delay, a second Raman pulse is sent, which leads to the emission of the stored photons. We reach storage and retrieval efficiencies for bright pulses of up to 39% in a 5-mm-long crystal. We also show that our device works at the single-photon level by storing and retrieving 3\ensuremath-\ensuremathμs-long weak coherent pulses with efficiencies up to 31%, demonstrating the most efficient spin-wave solid-state optical memory at the single-photon level so far. We reach an unconditional noise level of (9\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi1)\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-3 photons per pulse in a detection window of 4\phantom\rule0.16em0ex\ensuremathμs, leading to a signal-to-noise ratio of 33\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi4 for an average input photon number of 1, making our device promising for long-lived storage of nonclassical light.