Controlling rare-earth ions in a nanophotonic resonator using the ac Stark shift

Abstract

On-chip nanophotonic cavities will advance quantum information science and measurement because they enable efficient interaction between photons and long-lived solid-state spins, such as those associated with rare-earth ions in crystals. The enhanced photon-ion interaction creates new opportunities for all-optical control using the ac Stark shift. Toward this end, we characterize the ac Stark interaction between off-resonant optical fields and Nd 3+ -ion dopants in a photonic crystal resonator fabricated from yttrium orthovanadate (YVO 4 ). Using photon echo techniques, at a detuning of 160 MHz we measure a maximum ac Stark shift of 2π × 12.3 MHz per intracavity photon, which is large compared to both the homogeneous linewidth ( h = 84 kHz) and characteristic width of isolated spectral features created through optical pumping ( f ≈ 3 MHz). The photon-ion interaction strength in the device is sufficiently large to control the frequency and phase of the ions for quantum information processing applications. In particular, we discuss and assess the use of the cavity enhanced ac Stark shift to realize all-optical quantum memory and detection protocols. Our results establish the ac Stark shift as a powerful added control in rare-earth ion quantum technologies.

Accurate photon echo timing by optical freezing of exciton dephasing and rephasing in quantum dots

“…It should be noted that also intense off-resonant control pulses can be used to influence the dephasing of excitons in QD ensembles. In this case, the ac Stark effect may lead to modulations of the PE amplitude as recently demonstrated in rare-earth solids [38][39][40] . This behavior has also been confirmed within our model where we find that the temporal shift of the PE decreases in the presence of a detuning, for which also the PE amplitude rapidly reduces with increasing intensity of the control pulse.…”

Multifunctional on-chip storage at telecommunication wavelength for quantum networks

“…where n(ω)dω = N , and N is the number of ions. Each ion has a detuning ω relative to cavity center frequency, coherent decay rate γ h , and ion-cavity coupling rate g. After sending a photon into the cavity that is resonant with it, the dynamic equations [31,47] of cavity field E and atomic polarization σ ω in the rotating frame of photon frequency arė σ ω = −(iω + γ h )σ ω + igE.…”

Rare earth ions doped mixed crystals for fast quantum computers with optical frequency qubits

“…In recent years, many researchers working on the use of rare earth ions (REI) in crystals for the fabrication of optical quantum computers (OQC) have tied their expectations to the combined use of hyperfine and optical transitions in REI with hyperfine levels used as qubits (see, e.g. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]). These systems were found to meet the known criteria of quantum computers (DiVincenzo's criteria) [16].…”

“…These systems were found to meet the known criteria of quantum computers (DiVincenzo's criteria) [16]. The qubits considered in [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] are very weakly dependent on the environment. Such qubits interact extremely weakly with each other and can be considered independent, as required for quantum computers.…”