FREQUENCY-CHIRPED COPROPAGATING MULTIPLE-BIT STIMULATED-ECHO STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL IN PR3+-YALO3

Using a frequency-chirped ring dye laser, we have stored and recalled as much as 48 bits of information with the copropagating stimulated-echo geometry on the H-3(4)-D1(2) transition in Pr3+:YAlO3. Since the copropagating excitation scheme has all the excitation pulses spatially overlapping, this technique will be useful to the practical implementation of stimulated-echo memory because there is no need for alignment of beams. Our experiments also demonstrate that frequency chirping of the excitation pulses dramatically improves not only pulse-shape reproduction by the echo pulse but also the shot-to-shot stability of the amplitude of the recalled data.