Long light storage time in an optical fiber

Abstract

Light storage in an optical fiber is an attractive component in quantum optical delay line technologies. Although silica-core optical fibers are excellent in transmitting broadband optical signals, it is challenging to tailor their dispersive property to slow down a light pulse or store it in the silica core for a long delay time. Coupling a dispersive and coherent medium with an optical fiber is promising in supporting long optical delay. Here, we load cold Rb atomic vapor into an optical trap inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber, and store the phase of the light in a long-lived spin wave formed by atoms and retrieve it after a fully controllable delay time using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We achieve over 50 ms of storage time and the result is equivalent to 8.7×10^{−5}dB μs^{−1} of propagation loss in an optical fiber. Our demonstration could be used for buffering and regulating classical and quantum information flow between remote networks.