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Lindsay LeBlanc, Assistant Professor of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Ultra-Cold Gases for Quantum Simulation. Leblanc, in collaboration with his colleague Erhan Saglamyurek, has created a "simpler quantum hard drive than ever". Credit: University of Alberta
Physicists at the University of Alberta in Canada have developed a new way to build quantum memories, a method of storing delicate quantum information encoded in light pulses.
"We have developed a new way to store the light pulses, up to the level of single photons, in ultra-cold rubidium atomic clouds, and then retrieve them, on demand, by making Shine a "control light pulse," said Lindsay LeBlanc, Assistant Professor of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Ultra-Cold Gases for Quantum Simulation, and LeBlanc led the research with Erhan Saglamyurek, a postdoctoral fellow.
Quantum memories are an important component of quantum networks, playing almost the same role as the hard drives of today's computers. And the value of efficiently storing quantum data is growing, with practical applications including fiber optic quantum internet and other secure communication methods.
"This experiment involved taking short pulses of light, in which we could encode quantum information, storing light in the atoms, and then recovering the original pulse that contains the same information," Saglamyurek explained. .
The new method developed by LeBlanc and Saglamyurek, which is best suited to key applications requiring high speed operation, also has considerably fewer technical requirements than those required in standard quantum storage techniques. "The amount of energy needed, for example, is significantly lower than current options, and these reduced requirements make it easier to implement in other labs," added Saglamyurek. This discovery will enable the critical scaling up of quantum technologies, which has proven to be the biggest challenge so far in the emerging field.
The research team also included two graduate students working in LeBlanc's laboratory, Taras Hrushevskyi and Anindya Rastogi, and Khabat Heshami from the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa. The paper, "Coherent Storage and Handling of Broadband Photons via the Dynamically Controlled Autler-Townes Division", was published in Photonic Nature.
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More information:
Erhan Saglamyurek et al., Coherent storage and manipulation of broadband photons via dynamically controlled Autler – Townes splitting, Photonic Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41566-018-0279-0
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