Fast, noise-free memory for photon synchronization at room temperature

Future quantum photonic networks require coherent optical memories for synchronizing quantum sources and gates of probabilistic nature. Room temperature operation is also desirable for ease of scaling up. Until now, however, room-temperature atomic memories have suffered from an intrinsic read-out noise due to spontaneous four-wave-mixing. Here we demonstrate a new scheme for storing photons at room temperature, the fast ladder memory (FLAME). In this scheme, stimulated two-photon absorption is used instead of the previously used stimulated Raman scattering. As here the competing spontaneous processes would require spontaneous absorption of an optical photon, rather than emission, the noise is greatly suppressed. Furthermore, high external efficiency can be achieved as the control is well separated in frequency from the signal, and could be filtered out using highly efficient interference filters. We run the protocol in rubidium vapour, both on and off single-photon resonance, demonstrating a ratio of 50 between storage time and signal pulse width, an external total efficiency of over 25%, and only 2.3 × 10 ^-4 noise photons per extracted signal photon. This paves the way towards the efficient synchronization of probabilistic gates and sources at room temperature, and the controlled production of large quantum states of light.