corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 103 » Issue 4
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 043601 (2009) [4 pages]

Heralded Single-Magnon Quantum Memory for Photon Polarization States

Download: PDF (959 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Haruka Tanji1,2, Saikat Ghosh2, Jonathan Simon1,2, Benjamin Bloom2, and Vladan Vuletić2
1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
2Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Received 26 August 2008; published 20 July 2009

See accompanying Physics Viewpoint

We demonstrate a heralded quantum memory where a photon announces the mapping of a light polarization state onto a single collective-spin excitation (magnon) shared between two atomic ensembles. The magnon can be converted at a later time into a single polarized photon with polarization fidelity over 90(2)% for all fiducial input states, well above the classical limit of 2/3. The process can be viewed as a nondestructive quantum probe where a photon is detected, stored, and regenerated without touching its—potentially undetermined—polarization.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.043601
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.043601
PACS:
42.50.Ex, 32.80.Qk, 42.50.Dv, 42.50.Nn
 
< Previous Article | Next Article >