High-performance quantum memory for quantized states of light is a prerequisite building block of quantum information technology. Despite great progresses of optical quantum memories based on interactions of light and atoms, physical features of these memories still cannot satisfy requirements for applications in practical quantum information systems, since all of them suffer from trade-off between memory efficiency and excess noise. Here, we report a high-performance cavity-enhanced electromagnetically-induced-transparency memory with warm atomic cell in which a scheme of optimizing the spatial and temporal modes based on the time-reversal approach is applied. The memory efficiency up to 67 ± 1% is directly measured and a noise level close to quantum noise limit is simultaneously reached. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the average fidelities for a set of input coherent states with different phases and amplitudes within a Gaussian distribution have exceeded the classical benchmark fidelities. Thus the realized quantum memory platform has been capable of preserving quantized optical states, and is ready to be applied in quantum information systems, such as distributed quantum logic gates and quantum-enhanced atomic magnetometry.

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Quantum memory for the nonclassical state of light and entanglement among multiple remote quantum nodes hold promise for a large-scale quantum network, however, continuous-variable (CV) memory efficiency and entangled degree are limited due to imperfect implementation. Here we propose a scheme to deterministically entangle multiple distant atomic ensembles based on CV cavity-enhanced quantum memory. The memory efficiency can be improved with the help of cavity-enhanced electromagnetically induced transparency dynamics. A high degree of entanglement among multiple atomic ensembles can be obtained by mapping the quantum state from multiple entangled optical modes into a collection of atomic spin waves inside optical cavities. Besides being of interest in terms of unconditional entanglement among multiple macroscopic objects, our scheme paves the way towards the practical application of quantum networks.

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High-performance quantum memory for quantized states of light is a prerequisite building block of quantum information technology. Despite great progresses of optical quantum memories based on interactions of light and atoms, physical features of these memories still can not satisfy the requirement for applications in practical quantum information systems, since all of them suffer from trade off between memory efficiency and excess noise. Here, we report a high-performance cavity-enhanced electromagnetically-induced-transparency memory with warm atomic cell in which a scheme of optimizing the spatial and temporal modes based on the time-reversal approach is applied. A quantum memory with the efficiency up to 78 + 1% and the noise level close to quantum noise limit has been experimentally achieved. The realized quantum memory platform has been capable of preserving quantized optical states, and thus is ready to be applied in quantum information systems, such as distributed quantum logic gates and quantum-enhanced atomic magnetometry.