Hannover 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 23: Poster II

A 23.38: Poster

Donnerstag, 11. März 2010, 16:30–19:00, Lichthof

Storing the polarisation state of light in a BEC — •Chris Vo, Matthias Lettner, Stefan Riedl, Dominik Bauer, Simon Baur, Stephan Dürr, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching

The polarisation of light is a much used workhorse in quantum cryptography and quantum information applications. We experimentally realise a coherent memory for the polarisation of a light pulse using a Bose-Einstein condensate of ⁸⁷Rb atoms. Employing electromagnetically induced transparency we can store and retrieve two orthogonal polarisations of a weak probe pulse at the same time. The relative phase of these polarisations is maintained during this procedure. Therefore arbitrary coherent superpositions of these polarisations are stored in our memory. The maximum fraction of the retrieved light power lies above 30%. When storing linearly polarised light the ellipticity of the retrieved polarisation exceeds 80%. We demonstrated 5× 10⁴ storage and retrieval cycles on a single BEC containing ≈ 10⁶ atoms initially. The number of cycles is limited by heating and loss of atoms induced by the control light. In future experiments this technique could be applied to single photon pulses, realising a quantum memory for the photon polarisation.