Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Broadband waveguide quantum memory for entangled photons

Erhan Saglamyurek, Neil Sinclair, Jeongwan Jin, Joshua A. Slater, Daniel Oblak, Félix Bussières, Mathew George, Raimund Ricken, Wolfgang Sohler & Wolfgang Tittel

The reversible transfer of quantum states of light into and out of matter constitutes an important building block for future applications of quantum communication: it will allow the synchronization of quantum information1, and the construction of quantum repeaters2 and quantum networks3. Much effort has been devoted to the development of such quantum memories1, the key property of which is the preservation of entanglement during storage. Here we report the reversible transfer of photon–photon entanglement into entanglement between a photon and a collective atomic excitation in a solid-state device. Towards this end, we employ a thulium-doped lithium niobate waveguide in conjunction with a photon-echo quantum memory protocol4, and increase the spectral acceptance from the current maximum5 of 100megahertz to 5gigahertz. We assess the entanglement-preserving nature of our storage device through Bell inequality violations6 and by comparing the amount of entanglement contained in the detected photon pairs before and after the reversible transfer. These measurements show, within statistical error, a perfect mapping process. Our broadband quantum memory complements the family of robust, integrated lithium niobate devices7. It simplifies frequency-matching of light with matter interfaces in advanced applications of quantum communication, bringing fully quantum-enabled networks a step closer.


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Evidence for orbital superfluidity in the P-band of a bipartite optical square lattice

Georg Wirth, Matthias Ölschläger & Andreas Hemmerich

The successful emulation of the Hubbard model in optical lattices has stimulated extensive efforts to extend their scope to also capture more complex, incompletely understood scenarios of many-body physics. A promising approach is to consider higher bands, where the orbital degree of freedom gives rise to a structural diversity that is directly relevant, for example, for the physics of strongly correlated electronic matter. Here we report evidence for the formation of a superfluid in the P-band of a bipartite optical square lattice with S-orbits and P-orbits arranged in a chequerboard pattern. The observed momentum spectra feature cross-dimensional coherence with a lifetime of nearly 20ms. Depending on the value of a small adjustable anisotropy of the lattice, our findings are explained either by real-valued striped superfluid order parameters with different orientations Px±Py, or by a complex-valued Px±iPy order parameter, which breaks time-reversal symmetry.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The uncertainty principle in the presence of quantum memory

Mario Berta, Matthias Christandl,Roger Colbeck,Joseph M. Renes & Renato Renner

The uncertainty principle, originally formulated by Heisenberg1, clearly illustrates the difference between classical and quantum mechanics. The principle bounds the uncertainties about the outcomes of two incompatible measurements, such as position and momentum, on a particle. It implies that one cannot predict the outcomes for both possible choices of measurement to arbitrary precision, even if information about the preparation of the particle is available in a classical memory. However, if the particle is prepared entangled with a quantum memory, a device that might be available in the not-too-distant future2, it is possible to predict the outcomes for both measurement choices precisely. Here, we extend the uncertainty principle to incorporate this case, providing a lower bound on the uncertainties, which depends on the amount of entanglement between the particle and the quantum memory. We detail the application of our result to witnessing entanglement and to quantum key distribution.