Noise-free on-demand atomic frequency comb quantum memory
Sebastian P. Horvath, Mohammed K. Alqedra, Adam Kinos, Andreas Walther, Jan Marcus Dahlström, Stefan Kröll, Lars Rippe
Abstract
We present an extension of the atomic frequency comb protocol that utilizes the Stark effect to perform noisefree, on-demand, control. An experimental realization of this protocol was implemented in the Pr 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 solid-state system, and a recall efficiency of 38% for a 0.8 s storage time was achieved. Experiments were performed with both bright pulses as well as weak-coherent states, the latter achieving a signal-to-noise ratio of 570 120 using input pulses with an average photon number of 0.1. The principal limitation for a longer storage time was found to be the minimum peak width attainable for Pr 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 . We employ an adaptation of an established atomic frequency comb model to investigate an on-demand, wide-bandwidth, memory based on Eu 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 . From this, we determine that a storage time as long as 100 s may be practical even without recourse to spin-wave storage.