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Quantum storage of photonic entanglement in a crystal

Nature volume 469, pages 508–511 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

Entanglement is the fundamental characteristic of quantum physics—much experimental effort is devoted to harnessing it between various physical systems. In particular, entanglement between light and material systems is interesting owing to their anticipated respective roles as ‘flying’ and stationary qubits in quantum information technologies (such as quantum repeaters1,2,3 and quantum networks4). Here we report the demonstration of entanglement between a photon at a telecommunication wavelength (1,338 nm) and a single collective atomic excitation stored in a crystal. One photon from an energy–time entangled pair5 is mapped onto the crystal and then released into a well-defined spatial mode after a predetermined storage time. The other (telecommunication wavelength) photon is sent directly through a 50-metre fibre link to an analyser. Successful storage of entanglement in the crystal is proved by a violation of the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality6 by almost three standard deviations (S = 2.64 ± 0.23). These results represent an important step towards quantum communication technologies based on solid-state devices. In particular, our resources pave the way for building multiplexed quantum repeaters7 for long-distance quantum networks.

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Figure 1: Experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Non-classical correlations and storage efficiency.
Figure 3: Storage of photonic entanglement in a crystal.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Locher for help during the early stages of the experiment. We are grateful to A. Beveratos and W. Tittel for lending us avalanche photodiodes. This work was supported by the Swiss NCCR Quantum Photonics, the Science and Technology Cooperation Program Switzerland–Russia, as well as by the European projects QuRep and ERC-Qore. F.B. was supported in part by FQRNT.

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Author notes

  1. Christoph Clausen and Imam Usmani: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Christoph Clausen, Imam Usmani, Félix Bussières, Nicolas Sangouard, Mikael Afzelius, Hugues de Riedmatten & Nicolas Gisin

  2. ICFO—Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Mediterranean Technology Park, 08860 Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain ,

    Hugues de Riedmatten

  3. ICREA—Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, 08015 Barcelona, Spain ,

    Hugues de Riedmatten

Authors
  1. Christoph Clausen
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  4. Nicolas Sangouard
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All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mikael Afzelius.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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The file contains Supplementary Text, Supplementary Figures 1-3 with legends and additional references. (PDF 249 kb)

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Clausen, C., Usmani, I., Bussières, F. et al. Quantum storage of photonic entanglement in a crystal. Nature 469, 508–511 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09662

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