Article abstract


Nature Physics 2, 844 - 848 (2006)
doi:10.1038/nphys450

Subject Categories: Quantum physics | Atomic and molecular physics | Information theory and computation

Conditional control of the quantum states of remote atomic memories for quantum networking

D. Felinto, C. W. Chou, J. Laurat, E. W. Schomburg, H. de Riedmatten and H. J. Kimble


Quantum networks hold the promise for revolutionary advances in information processing with quantum resources distributed over remote locations via quantum-repeater architectures. Quantum networks are composed of nodes for storing and processing quantum states, and of channels for transmitting states between them. The scalability of such networks relies critically on the ability to carry out conditional operations on states stored in separated quantum memories. Here, we report the first implementation of such conditional control of two atomic memories, located in distinct apparatuses, which results in a 28-fold increase of the probability of simultaneously obtaining a pair of single photons, relative to the case without conditional control. As a first application, we demonstrate a high degree of indistinguishability for remotely generated single photons by the observation of destructive interference of their wave packets. Our results demonstrate experimentally a basic principle for enabling scalable quantum networks, with applications also to linear optics quantum computation.

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  1. Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics 12-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

Correspondence to: H. J. Kimble e-mail: hjkimble@caltech.edu

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