Accelerated Rydberg-EIT quantum memory via shortcuts to adiabaticity

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 19 Mar 2026] Accelerated Rydberg-EIT quantum memory via shortcuts to adiabaticity Y. Wei, Changcheng Li, Y. M. Liu, Yuechun Jiao, Weibin Li, X. Q. Shao Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) enables coherent light-matter storage, forming the basis of photonic quantum memories that are essential for scalable quantum networks and distributed quantum computing. However, accelerating the storage process violates the adiabatic condition, resulting in the excitation of the lossy intermediate state and a reduction in writing efficiency. We propose and numerically investigate a high-speed, high-fidelity quantum storage scheme by incorporating a shortcut-to-adiabaticity (STA) technique based on counter-diabatic (CD) driving. By introducing a precisely engineered auxiliary field into a conventional EIT system, our protocol significantly shortens the writing time beyond the conventional adiabatic limit while effectively suppressing the transient population of the lossy intermediate state. Furthermore, our scheme demonstrates strong flexibility in pulse design, remaining effective across different temporal profiles of both the control and signal fields. It also exhibits robustness against imperfections in the CD drive. Even with imperfect single-photon writing and non-ideal Rydberg blockade, the scheme retains clear advantages, maintaining high storage performance and overcoming the intrinsic speed-fidelity trade-off of traditional EIT protocols. These features pave the way for fast and robust quantum devices suitable for high-throughput quantum repeaters and advanced quantum information processing. Comments: 16 pages, 8 figures, comments are welcome Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.18399 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.18399v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18399 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Xiao-Qiang Shao [view email] [v1] Thu, 19 Mar 2026 01:42:35 UTC (12,149 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)