Our new article Storage and Retrieval of THz-Bandwidth Single Photons Using a Room-Temperature Diamond Quantum Memory by D.G. England, K.A.G. Fisher, J-P.W. MacLean, P.J. Bustard,
R. Lausten, K.J. Resch, and B.J. Sussman was published in Physical Review Letters. The work is the result of a great collaboration between our group and Ben Sussman’s Quantum Technology group at the National Research Council of Canada. This work was selected for a synopsis in Physics and as an Editor’s suggestion.
Abstract: We report the storage and retrieval of single photons, via a quantum memory, in the optical phonons of a room-temperature bulk diamond. The THz-bandwidth heralded photons are generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion and mapped to phonons via a Raman transition, stored for a variable delay, and released on demand. The second-order correlation of the memory output is g(2) = 0.65 ± 0.07, demonstrating a preservation of nonclassical photon statistics throughout storage and retrieval. The memory is low noise, high speed and broadly tunable; it therefore promises to be a versatile light-matter interface for local quantum processing applications.
Update March 8, 2015: Our work was covered in an article by S.M. Dambrot on Phys.org.