Quantum memory for images - a quantum hologram

Matter-light quantum interface and quantum memory for light are important ingredients of quantum information protocols, such as quantum networks, distributed quantum computation, etc. In this Letter we present a spatially multimode scheme for quantum memory for light, which we call a quantum hologram. Our approach uses a multi-atom ensemble which has been shown to be efficient for a single spatial mode quantum memory. Due to the multi-atom nature of the ensemble it is capable of storing many spatial modes, a feature critical for the present proposal. A quantum hologram has a higher storage capacity compared to a classical hologram, and is capable of storing quantum features of an image, such as multimode superposition and entangled quantum states, something that a standard hologram is unable to achieve. Due to optical parallelism, the information capacity of the quantum hologram will obviously exceed that of a single-mode scheme.