Photon echo quantum memory with complete use of natural inhomogeneous broadening

Abstract

The photon echo quantum memory is based on a controlled rephasing of the atomic coherence excited by signal light field in the inhomogeneously broadened resonant line. Here, we propose a novel active mechanism of the atomic rephasing which provides a perfect retrieval of the stored light field in the photon echo quantum memory for arbitrary initial inhomogeneous broadening of the resonant line. It is shown that the rephasing mechanism can exploit all resonant atoms which maximally increases an optical depth of the resonant transition that is one of the critical parameters for realization of highly efficient quantum memory. We also demonstrate that the rephasing mechanism can be used for various realizations of the photon echo quantum memory that opens a wide road for its practical realization.