Electromagnetically induced transparency quantum memory for non-classical states of light

ABSTRACT Quantum memory (QM) enables quantum state mapping between flying and stationary quantum states and is the building block of quantum information science, which enables to achieve a plethora of quantum information protocols, such as quantum state transfer across remote quantum nodes, distributed quantum logic gate, and quantum precession measurement network. Great progresses of quantum memories have been achieved, and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is one of the well-understood approaches of QM. Quantum states of light are the essential quantum resources for implementing quantum enhanced task, and thus it is a long-standing goal to store and release non-classical states of light. This paper presents an up-to-date review on recent developments in EIT-based QM: EIT quantum memories have been realized in warm atomic cell, cold atoms and solid system, respectively; and EIT mechanism has been applied to store and release single photon, squeezed state, entangled photon pairs and multipartite entangled states of optical modes. Graphical Abstract