Quantum Memory

The ultra-coherent mechanical resonators we have developed, are natural candidates for quantum memories, owing to their long coherence time and efficient coupling. Quantum memories are a prerequisite for many schemes for quantum communication, as well as distributed quantum computing. In a collaboration with the Quantum Photonics lab, we aim to store single photons as excitations of such a mechanical device. An anticipated bottleneck is such a protocol is the mismatch of bandwidths between single photons and the quantum memory, which we aim to address in various ways.

For one, we are investigating different mechanical systems with the potential for higher operation bandwidths, operating at GHz frequencies. Additionally we are looking into way to compress the bandwidth of single photons by combining a dispersive medium to stretch the single photon wavepacket temporally and subsequently chirping the stretched pulse.