Storage of images in atomic coherences in a rare-earth-ion-doped solid

We report on storage of images in atomic coherences driven by electromagnetically induced transparency in a doped solid. We demonstrate image storage times up to the regime of milliseconds (i.e., more than two orders of magnitude larger than in gaseous media). Our data also reveal an improvement in the spatial resolution of the retrieved images by a factor of 40. The long storage times become possible by applying additional radio frequency pulse sequences to drive rephasing of the atomic coherences. Moreover, the perturbing effect of atomic diffusion (which significantly limits image storage times in gases) is absent in the solid. In addition, we monitored pronounced oscillations in the intensity of the retrieved image versus the storage time. These oscillations are due to the beating of dark-state polaritons. All of these results demonstrate the superior properties of coherently driven optical data storage in solids. ©2010 The American Physical Society