%0 Journal Article %J Physical Review Letters %D 2007 %T Optimal control of light pulse storage and retrieval %A Irina Novikova %A Alexey V. Gorshkov %A David F. Phillips %A Anders S. Sorensen %A Mikhail D. Lukin %A Ronald L. Walsworth %X 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. %B Physical Review Letters %V 98 %8 2007/6/15 %G eng %U http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0702266v1 %N 24 %! Phys. Rev. Lett. %R 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.243602