Fiber Loop Quantum Buffer for Photonic Qubits

Abstract

We report a fiber loop quantum buffer based on a low-loss 2$\times$2 switch and a unit delay made of a fiber delay line. We characterize the device by using a two-photon polarization entangled state in which one photon of the entangled photon pair is stored and retrieved at a repetition rate up to 78$\mathrm{kHz}$. The device, which enables integer multiples of a unit delay, can store the qubit state in a unit of fiber delay line up to 5.4$\mathrm{km}$ and the number of loop round-trips up to 3. Furthermore, we configure the device with other active elements to realize integer multiplies and divider of a unit delay of a qubit. The quantum state tomography is performed on the retrieved photon and its entangled photon. We obtain a state fidelity $>94\%$ with a maximum storage time of 52$\mu \sec$. To further characterize the storing and retrieving processes of the device, we perform entanglement-assisted quantum process tomography on the buffered qubit state. The process fidelity of the device is $>$ 0.98. Our result implies that the device preserves the superposition and entanglement of a qubit state from a two-photon polarization-entangled state. This is a significant step towards facilitating applications in optical asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) based quantum networks.