Non-adiabatic Storage of Short Light Pulses in an Atom-Cavity System

We demonstrate the storage of $5$ ns light pulses in a single rubidium atom coupled to a fiber-based optical resonator. Our storage protocol addresses a regime beyond the conventional adiabatic limit and approaches the theoretical bandwidth limit. We extract the optimal control laser pulse properties from a numerical simulation of our system and measure storage efficiencies of $(8.2\pm 0.6)~%$, in close agreement with the maximum expected efficiency. Such well-controlled and high-bandwidth atom-photon interfaces are key components for future hybrid quantum networks.