Letter abstract


Nature Physics 3, 765 - 769 (2007)
Published online: 23 September 2007 | doi:10.1038/nphys726

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

Single-photon bus connecting spin-wave quantum memories

Jonathan Simon1,2, Haruka Tanji1,2, Saikat Ghosh2 & Vladan Vuletic acute2

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Generation of non-classical correlations (or entanglement) between atoms1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, photons8 or combinations thereof 9, 10, 11 is at the heart of quantum information science. Of particular interest are material systems serving as quantum memories that can be interconnected optically 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11. An ensemble of atoms can store a quantum state in the form of a magnon—which is a quantized collective spin excitation—that can be mapped onto a photon12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 with high efficiency19. Here, we report the phase-coherent transfer of a single magnon from one atomic ensemble to another via an optical resonator serving as a quantum bus that in the ideal case is only virtually populated. Partial transfer deterministically creates an entangled state with one excitation jointly stored in the two ensembles. The entanglement is verified by mapping the magnons onto photons, whose correlations can be directly measured. These results should enable deterministic multipartite entanglement between atomic ensembles.

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  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  2. Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Correspondence to: Jonathan Simon1,2 e-mail: simonj@mit.edu



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