@article {1180, title = {Universal Approach to Optimal Photon Storage in Atomic Media}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, volume = {98}, year = {2007}, month = {2007/3/19}, abstract = { 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. }, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.123601}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604037v3}, author = {Alexey V. Gorshkov and Axel Andre and Michael Fleischhauer and Anders S. Sorensen and Mikhail D. Lukin} }