Storage of fiber-guided light in a nanofiber-trapped ensemble of cold atoms

• DOI: 10.1364/optica.2.000353
• Publication Date: 2015-04-03T21:59:37Z
• Authors: C. Sayrin; C. Clausen; B. Albrecht; P. Schneeweiss; A. Rauschenbeutel
• Keywords: Quantum Physics; 13. Climate action; 11. Sustainability; 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph); 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences

Tapered optical fibers with a nanofiber waist are versatile tools for interfacing light and matter. In this context, laser-cooled atoms trapped in the evanescent field surrounding the optical nanofiber are of particular interest: They exhibit both long ground-state coherence times and efficient coupling to fiber-guided fields. Here, we demonstrate electromagnetically induced transparency, slow light, and the storage of fiber-guided optical pulses in an ensemble of cold atoms trapped in a nanofiber-based optical lattice. We measure a slow-down of light pulses to group velocities of 50 m/s. Moreover, we store optical pulses at the single photon level and retrieve them on demand in the fiber after 2 microseconds with an overall efficiency of (3.0 +/- 0.4) %. Our results show that nanofiber-based interfaces for cold atoms have great potential for the realization of building blocks for future optical quantum information networks.