TY - JOUR T1 - Optimal control of light pulse storage and retrieval JF - Physical Review Letters Y1 - 2007 A1 - Irina Novikova A1 - Alexey V. Gorshkov A1 - David F. Phillips A1 - Anders S. Sorensen A1 - Mikhail D. Lukin A1 - Ronald L. Walsworth AB - We demonstrate experimentally a procedure to obtain the maximum efficiency for the storage and retrieval of light pulses in atomic media. The procedure uses time reversal to obtain optimal input signal pulse-shapes. Experimental results in warm Rb vapor are in good agreement with theoretical predictions and demonstrate a substantial improvement of efficiency. This optimization procedure is applicable to a wide range of systems. VL - 98 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0702266v1 CP - 24 J1 - Phys. Rev. Lett. U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.243602 ER -