Quantum Memory, Quantum Phase Gate and Polarization Entangled Photon Pairs in a Coherent Atomic System

Abstract

It is known that photons are the ideal carriers of quantum information and ensemble of atoms can be acted as the long lived storage and processing units. In the coherently prepared atomic ensemble with the light resonantly interacting with the atoms, various schemes have been proposed to implement quantum state transfer and storage, quantum phase gate, generation of entangled photons, and the long-distance quantum communication [1]. We first proposed the dark-state polaritons in a five-level M-type atomic ensemble in the electro magnetically induced transparency (EIT) [2], Under conditions of the low excitation limit and adiabatic following, the quantum field can be mapped onto the atomic polarization states, forming the shape preserving quantum states of polaritons. Two channels for robust quantum memory are provided. Then, we investigated the nonlinear optical response of a five-level tripod atomic system in the EIT, and proposed a three-qubit phase gate protocol based on the fifth-order nonlinearity [3]. The cross phase modulation among three weak fields induced by the fifth-order nonlinearity in EIT can produce the phase shift of order n, which can be used to realize the three-qubit polarization phase gate. Finally, we proposed a cavity-QED scheme that can effectively generate EPR polarization-entangled photon pairs [4], A four-level tripod atom successively couples to two high-Q optical cavities possessing polarization degeneracy, assisted by a classical π-polarized pump field. The stimulated Raman adiabatic passage process in the atom-cavity system is used to produce the polarization-entangled photon pairs. The proposal is particularly robust against atomic spontaneous decay. The above protocols should have potential applications in quantum information processing.