Ultralong Photon Echo Storage Using Optical Locking

An ultralong photon storage with more than 50% retrieval efficiency is presented in the three-pulse photon echoes by using a pair of control pulses, where the control pulses play to freeze atoms dephasing process conditionally by transferring excited atoms to an auxiliary state and returning them back later. The observed photon echo decay time much longer than the spin homogeneous decay time is potential for long distance quantum communications.