Abstract
Quantum repeaters1 hold promise for scalable long-distance quantum communication. The basic building block is a quantum light–matter interface that generates non-classical correlations between light and a quantum memory2. Significant progress has been made in improving the performance of this interface3,4, but further development of quantum repeater is hindered by the difficulty of integrating the key capabilities into a single system4. Here we report a high-performance interface with an efficiency and lifetime that fulfil the requirement of a quantum repeater. By confining cold atoms with a three-dimensional optical lattice and enhancing the atom–photon coupling with a ring cavity, we observe an initial retrieval efficiency of 76 ± 5% together with a 1/e lifetime of 0.22 ± 0.01 s, which supports a sub-Hz entanglement distribution of up to 1,000 km through the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) protocol2. Together with an efficient telecom interface5,6 and moderate multiplexing7, our result may enable a quantum repeater system that beats direct transmission in the near future4.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Lifetime reductions and read-out oscillations due to imperfect initial level preparations of atoms in a long-lived DLCZ-like quantum memory
Applied Physics B Open Access 11 October 2022
-
High-performance cavity-enhanced quantum memory with warm atomic cell
Nature Communications Open Access 02 May 2022
-
Room-temperature single-photon source with near-millisecond built-in memory
Nature Communications Open Access 17 June 2021
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Briegel, H. J., Dur, W., Cirac, J. I. & Zoller, P. Quantum repeaters: the role of imperfect local operations in quantum communication. Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5932–5935 (1998).
Duan, L.-M., Lukin, M. D., Cirac, J. I. & Zoller, P. Long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles and linear optics. Nature 414, 413–418 (2001).
Simon, C. et al. Quantum memories. Eur. Phys. J. D 58, 1–22 (2010).
Sangouard, N., Simon, C., de Riedmatten, H. & Gisin, N. Quantum repeaters based on atomic ensembles and linear optics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 33–80 (2011).
Radnaev, A. G. et al. A quantum memory with telecom-wavelength conversion. Nature Phys. 6, 894–899 (2010).
Albrecht, B., Farrera, P., Fernandez-Gonzalvo, X., Cristiani, M. & de Riedmatten, H. A waveguide frequency converter connecting rubidium-based quantum memories to the telecom C-band. Nature Commun. 5, 3376 (2014).
Dai, H.-N. et al. Holographic storage of biphoton entanglement. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 210501 (2012).
Kimble, H. J. The quantum internet. Nature 453, 1023–1030 (2008).
Gisin, N. How far can one send a photon? Front. Phys. 10, 100307 (2015).
Korzh, B. et al. Provably secure and practical quantum key distribution over 307 km of optical fibre. Nature Photon. 9, 163–168 (2015).
Munro, W. J., Stephens, A. M., Devitt, S. J., Harrison, K. A. & Nemoto, K. Quantum communication without the necessity of quantum memories. Nature Photon. 6, 777–781 (2012).
Muralidharan, S., Kim, J., Lütkenhaus, N., Lukin, M. D. & Jiang, L. Ultrafast and fault-tolerant quantum communication across long distances. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 250501 (2014).
Azuma, K., Tamaki, K. & Lo, H.-K. All-photonic quantum repeaters. Nature Commun. 6, 6787 (2015).
Schnorrberger, U. et al. Electromagnetically induced transparency and light storage in an atomic Mott insulator. Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 033003 (2009).
Dudin, Y. O. et al. Entanglement of light-shift compensated atomic spin waves with telecom light. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 260502 (2010).
Dudin, Y. O., Li, L. & Kuzmich, A. Light storage on the time scale of a minute. Phys. Rev. A 87, 031801 (2013).
Simon, J., Tanji, H., Thompson, J. K. & Vuletić, V. Interfacing collective atomic excitations and single photons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 183601 (2007).
Hosseini, M., Sparkes, B., Campbell, G., Lam, P. & Buchler, B. High efficiency coherent optical memory with warm rubidium vapour. Nature Commun. 2, 174 (2011).
Hosseini, M., Campbell, G., Sparkes, B. M., Lam, P. K. & Buchler, B. C. Unconditional room-temperature quantum memory. Nature Phys. 7, 794–798 (2011).
Chen, Y.-H. et al. Coherent optical memory with high storage efficiency and large fractional delay. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 083601 (2013).
Bao, X.-H. et al. Efficient and long-lived quantum memory with cold atoms inside a ring cavity. Nature Phys. 8, 517–521 (2012).
Lundblad, N., Schlosser, M. & Porto, J. V. Experimental observation of magic-wavelength behavior of 87Rb atoms in an optical lattice. Phys. Rev. A 81, 031611 (2010).
Dudin, Y. O., Zhao, R., Kennedy, T. A. B. & Kuzmich, A. Light storage in a magnetically dressed optical lattice. Phys. Rev. A 81, 041805 (2010).
Zhao, B. et al. A millisecond quantum memory for scalable quantum networks. Nature Phys. 5, 95–99 (2009).
Fleischhauer, M., Imamoglu, A. & Marangos, J. P. Electromagnetically induced transparency: optics in coherent media. Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 633–673 (2005).
Zhao, R. et al. Long-lived quantum memory. Nature Phys. 5, 100–104 (2009).
Yang, F., Mandel, T., Lutz, C., Yuan, Z.-S. & Pan, J.-W. Transverse mode revival of a light-compensated quantum memory. Phys. Rev. A 83, 063420 (2011).
U'Ren, A. B., Silberhorn, C., Ball, J. L., Banaszek, K. & Walmsley, I. A. Characterization of the nonclassical nature of conditionally prepared single photons. Phys. Rev. A 72, 021802 (2005).
Lauk, N., O'Brien, C. & Fleischhauer, M. Fidelity of photon propagation in electromagnetically induced transparency in the presence of four-wave mixing. Phys. Rev. A 88, 013823 (2013).
Zhong, M. et al. Optically addressable nuclear spins in a solid with a six-hour coherence time. Nature 517, 177–180 (2015).
Tordrup, K., Negretti, A. & Mølmer, K. Holographic quantum computing. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 040501 (2008).
Barrett, S. D., Rohde, P. P. & Stace, T. M. Scalable quantum computing with atomic ensembles. New J. Phys. 12, 093032 (2010).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Fundamental Research Program of China. X.-H.B. acknowledge support from the Youth Qianren Program.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
S.-J.Y., X.-H.B. and J.-W.P. conceived and designed the experiment. S.-J.Y., X.-J.W. and X.-H.B. carried out the experiment. All authors analysed the data. S.-J.Y., X.-H.B. and J.-W.P. wrote the paper. X.-H.B. and J.-W.P. supervised the whole project.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information
Supplementary information (PDF 331 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, SJ., Wang, XJ., Bao, XH. et al. An efficient quantum light–matter interface with sub-second lifetime. Nature Photon 10, 381–384 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.51
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.51
This article is cited by
-
High-performance cavity-enhanced quantum memory with warm atomic cell
Nature Communications (2022)
-
Lifetime reductions and read-out oscillations due to imperfect initial level preparations of atoms in a long-lived DLCZ-like quantum memory
Applied Physics B (2022)
-
One-hour coherent optical storage in an atomic frequency comb memory
Nature Communications (2021)
-
Room-temperature single-photon source with near-millisecond built-in memory
Nature Communications (2021)
