Long-lived driven solid-state quantum memory

• Published in: New journal of physics Vol. 14; no. 9; pp. 93030 - 93040
• Main Authors: Cai, Jianming, Jelezko, Fedor, Katz, Nadav, Retzker, Alex, Plenio, Martin B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 17.09.2012
• ISSN: 1367-2630; 1367-2630
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/14/9/093030

We investigate the performance of inhomogeneously broadened spin ensembles as quantum memories under continuous dynamical decoupling. The role of the continuous driving field is twofold: firstly, it decouples individual spins from magnetic noise; secondly, and more importantly, it suppresses and reshapes the spectral inhomogeneity of spin ensembles. We show that a continuous driving field, which itself may also be inhomogeneous over the ensemble, can considerably enhance the decay of the tails of the inhomogeneous broadening distribution. This fact enables a spin-ensemble-based quantum memory to exploit the effect of cavity protection and achieve a much longer storage time. In particular, for a spin ensemble with a Lorentzian spectral distribution, our calculations demonstrate that continuous dynamical decoupling has the potential to improve its storage time by orders of magnitude for the state-of-the-art experimental parameters.