We demonstrate experimentally a robust quantum memory using a magnetic-field-independent hyperfine transition in 9Be+ atomic ion qubits at a magnetic field B ~= 0.01194 T. We observe that the single physical qubit memory coherence time is greater than 10 seconds, an improvement of approximately five orders of magnitude from previous experiments with 9Be+. We also observe long coherence times of decoherence-free subspace logical qubits comprising two entangled physical qubits and discuss the merits of each type of qubit.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0504076,
title = {Long-lived qubit memory using atomic ions},
author = {C. Langer and R. Ozeri and J. D. Jost and J. Chiaverini and B. DeMarco and A. Ben-Kish and R. B. Blakestad and J. Britton and D. B. Hume and W. M. Itano and D. Leibfried and R. Reichle and T. Rosenband and T. Schaetz and P. O. Schmidt and D. J. Wineland},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0504076},
year = {2009}
}