Quantum Storage of Heralded Single Photons paper is published in PRL

31 January 2014

Our paper  “Quantum Storage of Heralded Single Photons in a Praseodymium doped crystal” has been published in PRL. We report the first demonstration of quantum light storage in this material which has shown exceptional properties for storage of classical light pulses.

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ABSTRACT

We report on experiments demonstrating the reversible mapping of heralded single photons to long-lived collective optical atomic excitations stored in a Pr3+:Y2SiO5 crystal. A cavity-enhanced spontaneous down-conversion source is employed to produce widely nondegenerate narrow-band (2MHz) photon pairs. The idler photons, whose frequency is compatible with telecommunication optical fibers, are used to herald the creation of the signal photons, compatible with the Pr3+ transition. The signal photons are stored and retrieved using the atomic frequency comb protocol. We demonstrate storage times up to 4.5μs while preserving nonclassical correlations between the heralding and the retrieved photon. This is more than 20 times longer than in previous realizations in solid state devices, and implemented in a system ideally suited for the extension to spin-wave storage.

Ref: Quantum Storage of Heralded Single Photons in a Praseodymium Doped Crystal
Daniel Rieländer, Kutlu Kutluer, Patrick Ledingham, Mustafa Gündoğan, Julia Fekete, Margherita Mazzera and Hugues de Riedmatten
Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 040504 (2014)