Optical storage for 0.53 s in a solid-state atomic frequency comb memory using dynamical decoupling

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  • Adrian Holzäpfel
  • Jean Etesse
  • Krzysztof T. Kaczmarek
  • Alexey Tiranov
  • Nicolas Gisin
  • Mikael Afzelius

Quantum memories with long storage times are key elements in long-distance quantum networks. The atomic frequency comb (AFC) memory in particular has shown great promise to fulfill this role, having demonstrated multimode capacity and spin-photon quantum correlations. However, the memory storage times have so-far been limited to about 1 ms, realized in a Eu3+ doped Y2SiO5 crystal at zero applied magnetic field. Motivated by studies showing increased spin coherence times under applied magnetic field, we developed an AFC spin-wave memory utilizing a weak 15 mT magnetic field in a specific direction that allows efficient optical and spin manipulation for AFC memory operations. With this field configuration the AFC spin-wave storage time increased to 40 ms using a simple spin-echo sequence. Furthermore, by applying dynamical decoupling techniques the spin-wave coherence time reaches 530 ms, a 300-fold increase with respect to previous AFC spin-wave storage experiments. This result paves the way towards long duration storage of quantum information in solid-state ensemble memories.

Original languageEnglish
Article number063009
JournalNew Journal of Physics
Volume22
Issue number6
Number of pages14
ISSN1367-2630
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2020

    Research areas

  • atomic frequency comb, dynamical decoupling, quantum memory, rare-earth ion doped crystals

ID: 257923181