Cavity-Enhanced Atom-Photon Entanglement with Subsecond Lifetime
Xu-Jie Wang, Sheng-Jun Yang, Peng-Fei Sun, Bo Jing, Jun Li, Ming-Ti Zhou, Xiao‐Hui Bao, Jian-Wei Pan
Abstract
A cold atomic ensemble suits well for optical quantum memories, and its entanglement with a single photon forms the building block for quantum networks that give promise for many revolutionary applications. Efficiency and lifetime are among the most important figures of merit for a memory. In this Letter, we report the realization of entanglement between an atomic ensemble and a single photon with subsecond lifetime and high efficiency. We engineer dual control modes in a ring cavity to create entanglement and make use of three-dimensional optical lattice to prolong memory lifetime. The memory efficiency is 38% for 0.1 s storage. We verify the atom-photon entanglement after 1 s storage by testing the Bell inequality with a result of S=2.36±0.14.