We report an experimental study of electromagnetically induced transparency（EIT）-based light storage in a cloud of cold atoms loaded into a magneto-optical-trap（MOT）. After the MOT is turned off, the retrieval efficiencies of rightand left-circularly polarized signal light fields each as a function of storage time are measured for different time delays between MOT off and the storage event, respectively. The results show that in the delay ranging from 0.015 ms to 3.5 ms,the retrieval efficiency for a zero-storage time（0.2 μs） and the storage lifetime can exceed 15% and 1.4 ms, respectively.The measured results will provide important help for optimizing the storage of the polarized entanglement photons in cold atomic ensembles.
We report an experimental generation of polarization-entangled photon pairs in a cold atomic ensemble. A single Stokes photon and one spin-wave excitation are simultaneously created via spontaneous Raman scattering. The spin-wave excitation is then converted into an anti-Stokes photon via an electromagnetic-induced-transparency reading process. The measured cross-correlation functions between the Stokes and anti-Stokes photons for two orthogonal polarizations are -75 and 74, respectively, at a generation rate of the photon pair of -60/s. Based on such correlations, we obtain polarization-entangled photon pairs, whose Bell parameter is S = 2.77 4- 0.01, violating Bell-CHSH inequality by -77 standard deviations. The presented polarization-entangled photon source has high entanglement degree and fast generation rate, which will promise us to apply it in future quantum repeater.
Yuelong WuShujing LiWei GeZhongxiao XuLong TianHai Wang
