State Preparation for Rare-Earth Ion Based Quantum Memory

We report progress in using spectral hole-burning in praseodymium doped yttrium orthosilicate to prepare an ensemble of Pr ions with a spectral distribution optimized for use in a Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller-type (DLCZ) quantum-repeater scheme. We are studying the feasibility of this spectral hole-burning scheme for the DLCZ protocol and computationally optimizing parameters including the Rabi frequencies of the hole-burning fields and the pulsing parameters. We are experimentally studying the time required to reach steady state for each of the steps of the hole-burning sequence and find that this time differs for the various steps when all other parameters are kept the same. We discuss our computational and experimental progress toward implementing this state preparation scheme and our plans for further work.