Optical Barium Ion Qubit

We demonstrate an optical single qubit based on 6S1/2 to 5D5/2 quadrupole transition of a single Ba+ ion operated by diode based lasers only. The resonance wavelength of the 6S1/2 to 5D5/2 quadrupole transition is about 1762 nm which suitably falls close to the U-band of the telecommunication wavelength. Thus this qubit is a naturally attractive choice towards implementation of quantum repeater or quantum networks using existing telecommunication networks. We observe continuous bit-flip oscillations at a rate of about 250 kHz which is fast enough for the qubit operation as compared to the measured coherence time of over 3 ms. We also present a technique to quantify the bit-flip error in each qubit NOT gate operation.