Here, we discuss our experimental efforts toward building an alignment-free, long-lived, and efficient cavity-enhanced quantum memory in a thulium-doped crystal. A significant step forward for creating efficient quantum memories with long optical storage times.

The creation of well-understood structures using spectral hole burning is an important task in the use of technologies based on rare-earth ion-doped crystals. We apply a series of different techniques to model and improve the frequency dependent population change in the atomic level structure of thulium yttrium gallium garnet (Tm:YGG). In particular we demonstrate that, at zero applied magnetic field, numerical solutions to frequency-dependent three-level rate equations show good agreement with spectral hole-burning results. This allows us to predict spectral structures given a specific hole-burning sequence, the underpinning spectroscopic material properties, and the relevant laser parameters. This enables us to largely eliminate power-dependent hole broadening through the use of adiabatic hole-burning pulses. Although this system of rate equations shows good agreement at zero field, the addition of a magnetic field results in unexpected spectral diffusion proportional to the induced Tm ion magnetic-dipole moment and average magnetic-field strength, which, through the quadratic Zeeman effect, dominates the optical spectrum over long timescales. Our results allow optimization of the preparation process for spectral structures in a large variety of rare-earth ion-doped materials for quantum memories and other applications.

Single quantum emitters embedded in solid-state hosts are an ideal platform for realizing quantum information processors and quantum network nodes. Among the currently investigated candidates, Er3+ ions are particularly appealing due to their 1.5 μm optical transition in the telecom band as well as their long spin coherence times. However, the long lifetimes of the excited state - generally in excess of 1 ms - along with the inhomogeneous broadening of the optical transition result in significant challenges. Photon emission rates are prohibitively small, and different emitters generally create photons with distinct spectra, thereby preventing multiphoton interference - a requirement for building large-scale, multinode quantum networks. Here we solve this challenge by demonstrating for the first time linear Stark tuning of the emission frequency of a single Er3+ ion. Our ions are embedded in a lithium niobate crystal and couple evanescently to a silicon nanophotonic crystal cavity that provides a strong increase of the measured decay rate. By applying an electric field along the crystal c axis, we achieve a Stark tuning greater than the ion's linewidth without changing the single-photon emission statistics of the ion. These results are a key step towards rare earth ion-based quantum networks.

Long optical storage times are an essential requirement to establish high-rate entanglement distribution over large distances using memory-based quantum repeaters. Rare earth ion-doped crystals are arguably well-suited candidates for building such quantum memories. Toward this end, we investigate the 795.32 nm ³H₆ ↔ ³H₄ transition of 1% thulium-doped yttrium gallium garnet crystal (Tm³⁺:Y₃Ga₅O₁₂ : Tm³⁺:YGG). Most essentially, we find that the optical coherence time can reach 1.1 ms, and, using laser pulses, we demonstrate optical storage based on the atomic frequency comb (AFC) protocol up to 100 µs. In addition, we demonstrate multiplexed storage, including feed-forward selection, shifting, and filtering of spectral modes, as well as quantum state storage using members of non-classical photon pairs. Our results show that Tm:YGG can be a potential candidate for creating multiplexed quantum memories with long optical storage times.

The original version of this Article contained errors in the Competing interests statement and Table 1 and incorrectly omitted the Acknowledgements section. The original Competing interests statement reported no competing interests for the authors; this has been corrected to “B.H. and F.F. are employees of ID Quantique, Geneva and ID Quantique Europe, Vienna, respectively, which have competing interests with Arqit in developing quantum communication technologies. B.T. is an employee of Thales Alenia Space, a joint Venture which invests in satellite quantum communications. B.H. is the inventor of several patents, both pending and accepted, in the field of space QKD. The authors declare that there are no other competing interests”. The original Table 1 omitted the captions. Table 1 captions read: The different steps of the protocol are described below, each item corresponding to the numbered row in the Table. 1. Alice prepares a series of quantum states, according to BB84 polarisation protocol. For each state, she chooses both the bit value and the corresponding basis. She sends the states to Bob over a quantum channel (arrow with diagonal stripes). 2. Many states are lost in the transmission. Bob tells Alice, which states have been lost (X in the table). He uses the classical discussion channel (white arrow). Alice and Bob discard all the corresponding states. The resulting series of bits is the raw key. 3. Alice tells Bob, over the classical discussion channel, which bases she used. Bob notes the cases when he and Alice used different bases (X in the table), but does not tell Alice. The remaining bits represent the sifted key for Bob. Alice cannot know, which of the states were received by Bob in the correct basis. 4. to 6. Alice and Carol follow the same protocol with a new series of states. 7. Alice performs an XOR of the two raw keys she exchanged with Bob and with Carol and sends the result to Carol, over the classical discussion channel. 8. Bob sends directly to Carol, which bits he received in the wrong basis and should not be used (X in the table). He uses a confidential classical channel, “which cannot be eavesdropped by Alice” (black arrow). 9. Carol notes the wrong bits in the XORed key. 10. Carol makes an XOR of the two sifted keys, and sends to Bob, which bits should not be used (X in the table). She also uses the same confidential classical channel, “which cannot be eavesdropped by Alice”. 11. Bob and Carol now share a common sifted key, unknown to Alice. They can process it in the standard way (error estimation, error correction, privacy amplification) to finally get a shared secret key. The main hypothesis of the protocol is that Bob and Carol share a confidential classical channel, which cannot be eavesdropped by Alice. The correct Acknowledgements read: B.H., R.A., E.D., F.F., P.G., H.H., V.M., A.P., J.A.S., A.W. and H.Z. acknowledge support from the H2020-funded research project OPENQKD, Grant agreement contract number 857156, https://openqkd.eu/. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

In this work, we fabricate a multimode quantum memory out of a thulium-doped crystal and demonstrate storage of laser pulses of up to 100 µsec. A significant step forward for creating quantum memories with long optical storage times.

The forthcoming quantum Internet is poised to allow new applications not possible with the conventional Internet. The ability for both quantum and conventional networking equipment to coexist on the same fiber network would facilitate the deployment and adoption of coming quantum technology. Most quantum networking tasks, like quantum repeaters and the connection of quantum processors, require nodes for multi-qubit quantum measurements (often Bell-State measurements), and their real-world coexistence with the conventional Internet has yet to be shown. Here we field deploy a Measurement-Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI-QKD) system, containing a Bell-State measurement node, over the same fiber connection as multiple standard Internet Protocol (IP) data networks, between three nearby cities in the Netherlands. We demonstrate over 10 Gb/s classical data communication rates simultaneously with our next-generation QKD system, and estimate 200 GB/s of classical data transmission would be easily achievable without significantly affecting QKD performance. Moreover, as the system ran autonomously for two weeks, this shows an important step towards the coexistence and integration of quantum networking into the existing telecommunication infrastructure.

Entangled photon pair sources are essential for applications such as quantum communication and metrology. Here we present a compact energy–time entangled photon pair source at telecom wavelengths realized through cascaded second harmonic generation and spontaneous parametric down conversion in a single periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide. We introduce and characterize methods to diminish the effects of Raman scattering, the principal being quasi-CW pumping. The quality of energy–time entanglement produced by the compact source is analyzed using two-photon interference and Franson interference, and visibilities as high as 93.9% ± 0.4% and 90.5% ± 0.6% are achieved, respectively.

We characterize the magnetic properties for thulium ion energy levels in the (Tm:YGG) lattice with the goal to improve decoherence and reduce linewidth broadening caused by local host spins and crystal imperfections. More precisely, we measure hyperfine tensors for the lowest level of and excited states using a combination of spectral hole burning, absorption spectroscopy, and optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance. By rotating the sample through a series of angles with an applied external magnetic field, we measure and analyze the orientation dependence of the ion's spin Hamiltonian. Using this spin Hamiltonian, we propose a set of orientations to improve material properties that are important for light-matter interaction and quantum information applications. Our results yield several important external field directions: some to extend optical coherence times, another to improve spin inhomogeneous broadening, and yet another that maximizes mixing of the spin states for specific sets of ions, which allows improving optical pumping and creation of lambda systems in this material.

We characterize the optical coherence and energy-level properties of the 795-nm H63 to H43 transition of Tm3+ in a Ti4+:LiNbO3 waveguide at temperatures as low as 0.65 K. Coherence properties are measured with varied temperature, magnetic field, optical excitation power and wavelength, and measurement timescale. We also investigate nuclear spin-induced hyperfine structure and population dynamics with varying magnetic field and laser excitation power. Except for accountable differences due to different Ti4+- and Tm3+-doping concentrations, we find that the properties of Tm3+:Ti4+:LiNbO3 produced by indiffusion doping are consistent with those of a bulk-doped Tm3+:LiNbO3 crystal measured under similar conditions. Our results, which complement previous work in a narrower parameter space, support using rare-earth ions for integrated optical and quantum signal processing.

We argue that long optical storage times are required to establish entanglement at high rates over large distances using memory-based quantum repeaters. Triggered by this conclusion, we investigate the 795.325 nm3 H6↔H34 transition of Tm:Y3Ga5O12 (Tm:YGG). Most importantly, we find that the optical coherence time can reach 1.1 ms, and, using laser pulses, we demonstrate optical storage based on the atomic frequency comb protocol during up to 100 μs as well as a memory decay time Tm of 13.1 μs. Possibilities of how to narrow the gap between the measured value of Tm and its maximum of 275 μs are discussed. In addition, we demonstrate multiplexed storage, including with feed-forward selection, shifting and filtering of spectral modes, as well as quantum state storage using members of nonclassical photon pairs. Our results show the potential of Tm:YGG for creating multiplexed quantum memories with long optical storage times, and open the path to repeater-based quantum networks with high entanglement distribution rates.

Entangling quantum systems with different characteristics through the exchange of photons is a prerequisite for building future quantum networks. Proving the presence of entanglement between quantum memories for light working at different wavelengths furthers this goal. Here, we report on a series of experiments with a thulium-doped crystal, serving as a quantum memory for 794-nm photons, an erbium-doped fiber, serving as a quantum memory for telecommunication-wavelength photons at 1535 nm, and a source of photon pairs created via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Characterizing the photons after re-emission from the two memories, we find nonclassical correlations with a cross-correlation coefficient of g12(2)=53±8; entanglement preserving storage with input-output fidelity of FIO≈93±2%; and nonlocality featuring a violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt Bell inequality with S=2.6±0.2. Our proof-of-principle experiment shows that entanglement persists while propagating through different solid-state quantum memories operating at different wavelengths.

Long-lived sub-levels of the electronic ground-state manifold of rare-earth ions in crystals can be used as atomic population reservoirs for photon echo-based quantum memories. We measure the dynamics of the Zeeman sublevels of erbium ions that are doped into a lithium niobate waveguide, finding population lifetimes at cryogenic temperatures down to 0.7 K as long as seconds. Then, using these levels, we prepare and characterize atomic frequency combs (AFCs), which can serve as a memory for quantum light at 1532 nm wavelength. The results allow predicting a 0.1% memory efficiency, limited mainly by unwanted background absorption that we believe to be caused by excitation-induced erbium spin flips and frequency shifting due to two-level systems or non-equilibrium phonons. Hence, while it should be possible to create an AFC-based quantum memory in Er^{3 +}:Ti^{4 +}:LiNbO₃, improved crystal growth together with optimized AFC preparation will be required to make it suitable for applications in quantum communication.

We design and implement an atomic frequency comb quantum memory for 793-nm wavelength photons using a monolithic cavity based on a thulium- (Tm-) doped Y3Al5O12 crystal. Approximate impedance matching results in the absorption of 90% of input photons and a memory efficiency of (27.5±2.7)% over a 500-MHz bandwidth. The cavity enhancement leads to a significant improvement over the previous efficiency in Tm-doped crystals using a quantum memory protocol. In turn, this allows us to store and recall quantum states of light in such a memory. Our results demonstrate progress toward efficient and faithful storage of single-photon qubits with a large time-bandwidth product and multimode capacity for quantum networking.

The possibility for quantum and classical communication to coexist on the same fiber is important for deployment and widespread adoption of quantum key distribution (QKD) and, more generally, a future quantum internet. While coexistence has been demonstrated for different QKD implementations, a comprehensive investigation for measurement-device independent (MDI) QKD - a recently proposed QKD protocol that cannot be broken by quantum hacking that targets vulnerabilities of single-photon detectors - is still missing. Here we experimentally demonstrate that MDI-QKD can operate simultaneously with at least five 10 Gbps bidirectional classical communication channels operating at around 1550 nm wavelength and over 40 km of spooled fiber, and we project communication rates in excess of 10 THz when moving the quantum channel from the third to the second telecommunication window. The similarity of MDI-QKD with quantum repeaters suggests that classical and generalized quantum networks can co-exist on the same fiber infrastructure.

Large-scale fiber-based quantum networks will likely employ telecommunication-wavelength photons of around 1550 nm wavelength to exchange quantum information between remote nodes, and quantum memories, ideally operating at the same wavelength, that allow the transmission distances to be increased, as key elements of a quantum repeater. However, the development of a suitable memory remains an ongoing challenge. Here, we demonstrate the storage and reemission of single heralded 1532-nm-wavelength photons using a crystal waveguide. The photons are emitted from a photon-pair source based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion and the memory is based on an atomic frequency comb of 6 GHz bandwidth, prepared through persistent spectral-hole burning of the inhomogeneously broadened absorption line of a cryogenically cooled erbium-doped lithium niobate waveguide. Despite currently limited storage time and efficiency, this demonstration represents an important step toward quantum networks that operate in the telecommunication band and the development of integrated (on-chip) quantum technology using industry-standard crystals.