Recently, the team of Jin Xianmin from Shanghai Jiaotong University published the latest research results in the latest issue of the “Science” journal of the United States, proposed and experimentally demonstrated a hybrid architecture of a quantum storage network that can operate at room temperature, and built two different types of quantum memories act as nodes in the network.
“Theoretically, everyone’s fiber optic network at home can be transformed into a quantum network, but in the past, quantum memory had to work near absolute zero, which greatly increased the technical complexity and reliability of the quantum network architecture.”Jin Xianmin said, “solving the problem of room temperature operation not only reduces the structural cost of applications such as quantum computing, quantum communication, but also solves its large-scale application a road blocker.”
According to reports, the hybrid quantum network composed of the two kinds of quantum memories realized this time can manufacture and store quantum states on demand, and can combine, separate, exchange and split single or multiple photons in the time domain. At the same time the quantum properties are well maintained. This research provides a new approach in the field of quantum information processing. Its room-temperature operating conditions and abundant quantum state operation capabilities are of great significance for practical applications such as quantum communication, quantum computing, and quantum simulation.
More than 20 years ago, scientists proposed the important role of quantum memory in pushing quantum technology into practical applications. On the one hand, quantum memory can be used for quantum relay, enabling multiple point-to-point communication links to be connected, avoiding the loss of long-distance communication, and making long-distance quantum communication possible. On the other hand, quantum memory can generate synchronized multi-photons in a time-division multiplexed manner, which is essential to improve the computing power of quantum computing. However, for a long time, constructing practical and useful quantum memories has been a challenge in itself. It needs to meet the requirements of high bandwidth, high efficiency, long life, and low noise, and more importantly, it can work at room temperature.
The team of Jin Xianmin from Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Integrated Quantum Information Technology Research Center has been working on the research of broadband quantum storage at room temperature, especially focusing on solving the problems of billions of atoms in quantum memory at severe room temperature and the degradation of quantum quality. Based on the previous research, recently, the research team proposed a hybrid architecture of a broadband storage quantum network that can be operated at room temperature, and experimentally integrated two different types of quantum memories at the same time as nodes in the network. It’s an important step in practical quantum memory and quantum networks.
In the future, the research team hopes to fully explore the scalability of the quantum network based on room temperature wideband quantum memory. By constructing more nodes and improving the performance of the nodes, the quantum network will have richer quantum information processing capabilities.
