The reversible transfer of quantum states of light into and out of matter constitutes an important building block for future applications of quantum communication: it will allow the synchronization of quantum information, and the construction of quantum repeaters and quantum networks. Much effort has been devoted to the development of such quantum memories, the key property of which is the preservation of entanglement during storage. Here we report the reversible transfer of photon-photon entanglement into entanglement between a photon and a collective atomic excitation in a solid-state device. Towards this end, we employ a thulium-doped lithium niobate waveguide in conjunction with a photon-echo quantum memory protocol, and increase the spectral acceptance from the current maximum of 100 megahertz to 5 gigahertz. We assess the entanglement-preserving nature of our storage device through Bell inequality violations and by comparing the amount of entanglement contained in the detected photon pairs before and after the reversible transfer. These measurements show, within statistical error, a perfect mapping process. Our broadband quantum memory complements the family of robust, integrated lithium niobate devices. It simplifies frequency-matching of light with matter interfaces in advanced applications of quantum communication, bringing fully quantum-enabled networks a step closer.

Future multi-photon applications of quantum optics and quantum information science require quantum memories that simultaneously store many photon states, each encoded into a different optical mode, and enable one to select the mapping between any input and a specific retrieved mode during storage. Here we show, with the example of a quantum repeater, how to employ spectrallymultiplexed states and memories with fixed storage times that allow such mapping between spectral modes. Furthermore, using a Ti:Tm:LiNbO3 waveguide cooled to 3 Kelvin, a phase modulator, and a spectral filter, we demonstrate storage followed by the required feed-forward-controlled frequency manipulation with time-bin qubits encoded into up to 26 multiplexed spectral modes and 97% fidelity.PACS numbers: 03.67. Hk, 42.50.Ex, 32.80.Qk, 78.47.jf Further advances towards scalable quantum optics [1,2] and quantum information processing [3,4] rely on joint measurements of multiple photons that encode quantum states (e.g. qubits) [3][4][5]. However, as photons generally arrive in a probabilistic fashion, either due to a probabilistic creation process or due to loss during transmission, such measurements are inherently inefficient. For instance, this leads to exponential scaling of the time required to establish entanglement, the very resource of quantum information processing, as a function of distance in a quantum relay [6]. This problem can be overcome by using quantum memories, which are generally realized through the reversible mapping of quantum states between light and matter [7,8]. For efficient operation, these memories must be able to simultaneously store many photon states, each encoded into a different optical mode, and subsequently (using feed-forward) allow selecting the mapping between input and retrieved modes (e.g., different spectral or temporal modes). This enables making several photons arriving at a measurement device indistinguishable, thereby rendering joint measurements deterministic. For instance, revisiting the example of entanglement distribution, a quantum relay supplemented with quantum memories changes it to a repeater and, in principle, the scaling from exponential to polynomial [4,9].Interestingly, for such multimode quantum memories to be useful, it is not necessary to map any input mode onto any retrieved (output) mode, but it often suffices if a single input mode, chosen once a photon is stored, can be mapped onto a specific output mode (e.g. characterized by the photon's spectrum and recall time) [4,10]. This ensures that the photons partaking in a joint measurement, each recalled from a different quantum memory, are indistinguishable, as required, e.g., for a Bell-state measurement. We emphasize that it does not matter if the device used to store quantum states also allows the mode mapping, or if the mode mapping is performed after recall using appended devices -we will refer to the system allowing storage and mode mapping as the memory.To date, most research assumes photons arriving at different times at the m...

a b s t r a c tWe report the fabrication and characterization of a Ti 4 þ : Tm 3 þ : LiNbO 3 optical waveguide in view of photon-echo quantum memory applications. Specifically, we investigated room-and cryogenictemperature properties of the waveguide, and the Tm 3 þ ions, via absorption, spectral hole burning, photon echo, and Stark spectroscopy. For the Tm 3 þ ions, we found radiative lifetimes of 82 ms and 2.4 ms for the 3 H 4 and 3 F 4 levels, respectively, and a 44% branching ratio from the 3 H 4 to the 3 F 4 level.We also measured an optical coherence time of 1:6 ms for the 3 H 6 2 3 H 4 , 795 nm wavelength transition, and investigated the limitation of spectral diffusion to spectral hole burning. Upon application of magnetic fields of a few hundred Gauss, we observed persistent spectral holes with lifetimes up to seconds. Furthermore, we measured a linear Stark shift of 25 kHz cm=V. Our results are promising for integrated, electro-optical, waveguide quantum memory for photons.

Time-frequency Schmidt (TFS) modes of ultrafast quantum states are naturally compatible with high bit-rate integrated quantum communication networks. Thus they offer an attractive alternative for the realization of high dimensional quantum optics. Here, we present a quantum pulse gate based on dispersion-engineered ultrafast frequency conversion in a nonlinear optical waveguide, which is a key element for harnessing the potential of TFS modes. We experimentally retrieve the modal spectral-temporal structure of our device and demonstrate a single-mode operation fidelity of 80%, which is limited by experimental shortcomings. In addition, we retrieve a conversion efficiency of 87.7% with a high signal-to-noise ratio of 8.8 when operating the quantum pulse gate at the single-photon level.

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