Universal Approach to Optimal Photon Storage in Atomic Media

We present a universal physical picture for describing storage and retrieval of photon wave packets in a Lambda-type atomic medium. This physical picture encompasses a variety of different approaches to pulse storage ranging from adiabatic reduction of the photon group velocity and pulse-propagation control via off-resonant Raman fields to photon-echo based techniques. Furthermore, we derive an optimal control strategy for storage and retrieval of a photon wave packet of any given shape. All these approaches, when optimized, yield identical maximum efficiencies, which only depend on the optical depth of the medium.