Establishing and storing of deterministic quantum entanglement among three distant atomic ensembles

It is crucial for the physical realization of quantum information networks to first establish entanglement among multiple space-separated quantum memories and then, at a user-controlled moment, to transfer the stored entanglement to quantum channels for distribution and conveyance of information. Here we present an experimental demonstration on generation, storage, and transfer of deterministic quantum entanglement among three spatially separated atomic ensembles. The off-line prepared multipartite entanglement of optical modes is mapped into three distant atomic ensembles to establish entanglement of atomic spin waves via electromagnetically induced transparency light-matter interaction. Then the stored atomic entanglement is transferred into a tripartite quadrature entangled state of light, which is space-separated and can be dynamically allocated to three quantum channels for conveying quantum information. The existence of entanglement among three released optical modes verifies that the system has the capacity to preserve multipartite entanglement. The presented protocol can be directly extended to larger quantum networks with more nodes.Continuous-variable encoding is a promising approach for quantum information and communication networks. Here, the authors show how to map entanglement from three spatial optical modes to three separated atomic samples via electromagnetically induced transparency, releasing it later on demand.