Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 4: Quantum information: Quantum communication I

Q 4.2: Talk

Monday, March 18, 2013, 11:15–11:30, F 342

Light storage in the presence of four-wave mixing — •Nikolai Lauk, Christopher O’Brien, and Michael Fleischhauer — Fachbereich Physik, TU Kaiserslautern

We investigate the effects of four-wave mixing (FWM) in a quantum memory which exploits electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) to map a signal field, ideally a single photon, onto a long-lived collective atomic excitation by adiabatically switching off and on a strong control field. At high optical depths a four-wave mixing process can occur in this scheme, since the control field starts to act on both possible transitions producing a new idler field, which in turn affects the propagation of the signal field. FWM amplifies the signal field but also introduces noise to the signal channel. We use a full quantum mechanical approach to solve the coupled Maxwell-Bloch equations in order to determine when FWM is beneficial and when it is detrimental to light storage.