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arXiv:1604.02374 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

High-resolution transient and permanent spectral hole burning in Ce3+:Y2SiO5 at liquid helium temperatures

Jenny Karlsson, Adam Kinos, Diana Serrano, Andreas Walther, Philippe Goldner, Alban Ferrier, Lars Rippe, Stefan Kröll

Published Jun 21, 2016• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We perform hole burning with a low-drift stabilized laser within the zero phonon line of the $4f\ensuremath{-}5d$ transition in ${\mathrm{Ce}}^{3+}:{\mathrm{Y}}_{2}{\mathrm{SiO}}_{5}$ at 2 K. The narrowest spectral holes appear for small applied magnetic fields and are $6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}4$ MHz wide (FWHM). This puts an upper bound on the homogeneous linewidth of the transition to $3\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2$ MHz, which is close to lifetime limited. The spin level relaxation time is measured to $72\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}21$ ms with a magnetic field of 10 mT. A slow permanent hole burning mechanism is observed. If the excitation frequency is not changed the fluorescence intensity is reduced by more than $50%$ after a couple of minutes of continuous excitation. The spectral hole created by the permanent hole burning has a width in the tens of MHz range, which indicates that a trapping mechanism occurs via the $5d$ state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.93.224304

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Narrow spectral holes in the absorption lines of Er doped crystals have been explored as references for frequency stabilizing external cavity diode lasers at the important 1.5 μm optical communication wavelength. Allan deviations of the beat signal between two independent stabilized lasers as low as 200 Hz over 10 ms integration time have been achieved using regenerative spectral holes in Er:Y2SiO5 and Er:KTP, while drift was reduced to ~ 7 kHz/min by incorporating the inhomogeneous absorption line as a fixed reference. During active stabilization, the transient spectral hole was continuously regenerated as hole burning balanced relaxation. In contrast, persistent spectral holes in Er:D:CaF2, with lifetimes of several weeks, provided programmable and transportable secondary frequency references that maintained sub-kilohertz stability over several seconds and enabled 6 kHz stability over 3 1.6 10 s × . The error signal was derived from the spectral hole transmission using frequency modulation spectroscopy. A servo amplifier applied fast frequency corrections to the injection current of the laser diode and slower adjustments to the piezo-driven feedback prism plate. These stabilized lasers provide ideal sources for spectral hole burning applications based on optical coherent transients, where laser stability is required over the storage time of the material. Since the lifetime of the frequency reference is exactly the material storage time, this requirement is automatically met by using our technique. This was demonstrated in Er:Y2SiO5 and successfully transferred to high-bandwidth signal processing applications. The material Er:Y2SiO5 was optimized for these applications. The I15/2 and I13/2 crystal field levels were site-selectively determined by absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy. The excited state lifetime was measured to be 11.4 ms for site 1 and 9.2 ms for site 2. Zeeman experiments and two-pulse photon echo spectroscopy as a function of magnetic field orientation were used to determine the anisotropic electronic g-values for both Er sites and established a preferred magnetic field orientation for minimizing homogeneous line broadening by spectral diffusion. The spectral diffusion was characterized by stimulated photon echo spectroscopy and successfully described with established theories. In a 0.02 atomic percent Er:Y2SiO5 crystal at B = 0.8 T and T = 1.6 K, line broadening became significant after 10 μs, increasing the homogeneous linewidth from 7.5 kHz to 75 kHz after 120 μs. Spectral diffusion, primarily caused by direct phonon driven Er spin-flips in the ground state, can be controlled to negligible levels with proper magnetic field strength and orientation, temperature, and erbium concentration. In optimizing Er:Y2SiO5, the narrowest optical resonance in any solid-state material of 73 Hz was measured.
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We have frequency stabilized a Coherent CR699-21 dye laser to a transient spectral hole on the 606 nm transition in Pr^{+3}:Y_2SiO_5. A frequency stability of 1 kHz has been obtained on the 10 microsecond timescale together with a long-term frequency drift below 1 kHz/s. RF magnetic fields are used to repopulate the hyperfine levels allowing us to control the dynamics of the spectral hole. A detailed theory of the atomic response to laser frequency errors has been developed which allows us to design and optimize the laser stabilization feedback loop, and specifically we give a stability criterion that must be fulfilled in order to obtain very low drift rates. The laser stability is sufficient for performing quantum gate experiments in Pr^{+3}:Y_2SiO_5.