Storage and retrieval of microwave fields at the single-photon level in a spin ensemble

  1. C. Grezes,
  2. B. Julsgaard,
  3. Y. Kubo,
  4. W. L. Ma,
  5. M. Stern,
  6. A. Bienfait,
  7. K. Nakamura,
  8. J. Isoya,
  9. S. Onoda,
  10. T. Ohshima,
  11. V. Jacques,
  12. D. Vion,
  13. D. Esteve,
  14. R. B. Liu,
  15. K. Mølmer,
  16. and P. Bertet
We report the storage of microwave pulses at the single-photon level in a spin-ensemble memory consisting of 1010 NV centers in a diamond crystal coupled to a superconducting LC resonator. The energy of the signal, retrieved 100μs later by spin-echo techniques, reaches 0.3% of the energy absorbed by the spins, and this storage efficiency is quantitatively accounted for by simulations. This figure of merit is sufficient to envision first implementations of a quantum memory for superconducting qubits.
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