Noise modeling of a photon echo memory

Abstract

The photon echo memory is one of the most attractive optical memories in terms of memory capacity and access speed. Fundamentally, the storage capacity and access speed are limited by the inhomogeneous bandwidth of the material. In reality, however, the storage capacity and data rates are further limited by several kinds of imperfections in the memory process. One of the main limiting factors is the noise caused by several sources. In this dissertation we categorize these noise sources into three groups, time domain noise, frequency domain noise, and detection noise. For each noise group, we create models and characterize the noise properties. We then simulate each noise model in the computer and compare the results with the analytical results. Experimental results are also presented. Those experimental results yield insight into the photon echo memory system and its physical noise characteristics. The dissertation concludes with an interpretation of the noise modeling approach described and proposes fiiture directions for this research area.