Spinwave Engineering for Active Quantum Memories Program

Many significant goals in optical quantum information systems rely on being able to store and release photons on demand.  In other words, we need a quantum memory for photonic qubits.  One way to do this is to absorb optical qubits into ensembles of atoms.  Atomic absorption can, with careful control of the atoms, be made reversible and have a long storage time.  This idea is at the core of our basic optical quantum memory that has an efficiency of nearly 90% and storage time of 1 millisecond.  Beyond this passive memory, however, there are other exciting possibilities afforded the properties of the memory. When absorbed, photons are recorded as “spinwaves” in the atomic ensemble.  The goal of active spinwave engineering is to look for ways of manipulating quantum information while it is stored as a spinwave.  Through these investigations we aim to develop new ways to process optical quantum information. The Spinwave Engineering for Active Quantum Memories Program is led by A.Prof. Ben Buchler based at The Australian National University in Canberra.