Bose-Einstein condensates have been produced in an optical box trap. This novel optical trap type has strong confinement in two directions comparable to that which is possible in an optical lattice, yet produces individual condensates rather than the thousands typical of a lattice. The box trap is integrated with single atom detection capability, paving the way for studies of quantum atom statistics.

. Here we present an experimental investigation into extending the storage time of quantum memory for single excitations. We identify and isolate distinct mechanisms responsible for the decoherence of spin waves in atomic-ensemble-based quantum memories. By exploiting magnetic-field-insensitive statesso-called clock states-and generating a long-wavelength spin wave to suppress dephasing, we succeed in extending the storage time of the quantum memory to 1 ms. Our result represents an important advance towards long-distance quantum communication and should provide a realistic approach to large-scale quantum information processing.The quantum repeater with atomic ensembles and linear optics has attracted broad interest in recent years, as it holds promise to implement long-distance quantum communication and the distribution of entanglement over quantum networks. Following the protocol proposed in ref. 3 and the subsequent improved schemes 4-7 , significant experimental progress has been accomplished, including the coherent manipulation of the stored excitation in one 10,11 or two 14-16 atomic ensembles, the demonstration of memory-built-in quantum teleportation 17 and the realization of a building block of the quantum repeater 13,18 . In these experiments, the atomic ensembles serve as the storable and retrievable quantum memory for single excitations.Despite the advances achieved in manipulating atomic ensembles, long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles remains challenging owing to the short storage time of the quantum memory for single excitations. For example, for direct generation of entanglement between two memory qubits over a few hundred kilometres, we need a memory with a storage time of a few hundred microseconds. However, the longest storage time reported so far is of the order of only 10 µs (refs 10-13).It has long been believed that the short coherence time is mainly caused by the residual magnetic field 19,20 . Thereby, storing the collective state in the superposition of the first-order magnetic-field-insensitive states 21 , that is, the 'clock states', is suggested to inhibit this decoherence mechanism 19 . A numerical calculation shows that the expected lifetime is of the order of seconds in this case.Here we report on our investigation of prolonging the storage time of the quantum memory for single excitations. In the experiment, we find that using only the 'clock state' is not sufficient to obtain the expected long storage time. We further analyse, isolate and identify the distinct decoherence mechanisms, and thoroughly investigate the dephasing of the spin wave (SW) by varying its wavelength. We find that the dephasing of the SW is extremely sensitive to the angle between the write beam and detection mode, especially for small angles. On the basis of this finding, by exploiting the 'clock state' and increasing the wavelength of the SW to suppress the dephasing, we succeed in extending the storage time from 10 µs to 1 ms.The illustration of our experiment is depicted in Fig. 1a,b....

We report the direct observation of sub-Poissonian number fluctuation for a degenerate Bose gas confined in an optical trap. Reduction of number fluctuations below the Poissonian limit is observed for average numbers that range from 300 to 60 atoms.

The combination of quantum teleportation 1 and quantum memory 2-5 of photonic qubits is essential for future implementations of large-scale quantum communication 6 and measurement-based quantum computation 7,8 . Both steps have been achieved separately in many proof-of-principle experiments 9-14 , but the demonstration of memory-built-in teleportation of photonic qubits remains an experimental challenge. Here, we demonstrate teleportation between photonic (flying) and atomic (stationary) qubits. In our experiment, an unknown polarization state of a single photon is teleported over 7 m onto a remote atomic qubit that also serves as a quantum memory. The teleported state can be stored and successfully read out for up to 8 µs. Besides being of fundamental interest, teleportation between photonic and atomic qubits with the direct inclusion of a readable quantum memory represents a step towards an efficient and scalable quantum network 2-8 .Quantum teleportation 1 , a way to transfer the state of a quantum system from one place to another, was first demonstrated between two independent photonic qubits 9 ; later developments include demonstration of entanglement swapping 10 , open-destination teleportation 11 and teleportation between two ionic qubits 15,16 . Teleportation has also been demonstrated for a continuous-variable system, that is, transferring a quantum state from one light beam to another 17 and, more recently, even from light to matter 18 . However, the above demonstrations have several drawbacks, especially in long-distance quantum communication. On the one hand, the absence of quantum storage makes the teleportation of light alone non-scalable. On the other hand, in teleportation of ionic qubits, the shared entangled pairs were created locally, which limits the teleportation distance to a few micrometres and is difficult to extend to large distances. In continuous-variable teleportation between light and matter, the experimental fidelity is extremely sensitive to the transmission loss-even in the ideal case, only a maximal attenuation of 10 −1 is tolerable 19 . Moreover, the complicated protocol required for retrieving the teleported state in the matter 20 is beyond the reach of current technology.The combination of quantum teleportation and quantum memory of photonic qubits 2-5 could provide a novel way to overcome these drawbacks. Here, we achieve this appealing combination by experimentally implementing teleportation between discrete photonic (flying) and atomic (stationary) qubits.In our experiment, we use the polarized photonic qubits as the information carriers and the collective atomic qubits [2][3][4][5]12 (an effective qubit consists of two atomic ensembles, each with 10 6 rubidium-87 atoms) as the quantum memory. In memorybuilt-in teleportation, an unknown polarization state of single photons is teleported onto and stored in a remote atomic qubit via a Bell-state measurement between the photon to be teleported and the photon that is originally entangled with the atomic qubit. The protocol has ...

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