Storage of Light in Atomic Coherences
Prof. Dr. Thomas Halfmann (Institut für Angewandte Physik, TU Darmstadt)

<p> Interactions between strong, coherent radiation (i.e. lasers) and matter (i.e. quantum systems) provide well-established and powerful tools to control optical properties and processes in any type of quantized medium. Among others, contemporary research efforts aim at efficient storage and processing of optically encoded data, e.g. as required in quantum information processing. Thus, a large number of experimental studies in quantum information science have been conducted in atomic media in the gas phase (i.e. media of very low storage density). Only few experiments on coherent interactions were conducted in solid state media. <p>

<p> The talk presents experimental implementations of coherent laser-driven interactions in particular solid media, i.e. rare-earth doped solids. The latter media combine the advantages of atoms in the gas phase (i.e. spectrally narrow transitions) with the advantages of solids (i.e. large density and scalability). The talk reports on the experimental implementation of rapid adiabatic passage (RAP) to switch between absorption and amplification in the crystal, stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) to manipulate atomic population distributions, and electro-magnetically-induced transparency (EIT) to store and retrieve light pulses (e.g. optically encoded information) in a rare-earth doped solid. <p>