Temporal compression of quantum-information-carrying photons using a photon-echoquantum memory approach

摘要

We study quantum compression and decompression of light pulses that carry quantum information using aphoton-echo quantum memory technique with controllable inhomogeneous broadening of an isolated atomicabsorption line. We investigate media with differently broadened absorption profiles, transverse and longitudinal,finding that the recall efficiency can be as large as unity and that the quantum information encoded into thephotonic qubits can remain unperturbed. Our results provide insight into reversible light-atom interaction and areinteresting in view of future quantum communication networks, where pulse compression and decompressionmay play an important role in increasing the qubit rate or in mapping quantum information from photonic carrierswith large optical bandwidth into atomic memories with smaller bandwidth.