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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

High-resolution large dynamic range spectral filtering at 800 nm using Tm:YAG crystals

Anne Louchet-Chauvet, Romain Lauro, Philippe Goldner, François Ramaz, T. Chanelière, Jean-Louis Le Gouët

Published Feb 10, 2011• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Thulium-doped crystals are considered for programmable filtering. Such a filter can be achieved by Spectral Hole Burning (SHB). One optically pumps the active ions into a long-lived shelving state, opening a narrow transparency window in the crystal absorption band. We investigate a new shelving scheme in Tm:YAG where the thulium ions are pumped into a ground state nuclear Zeeman sublevel, instead of their natural 10ms-lifetime metastable state. The shelving time is increased to several seconds, reducing the residual population in the transparency window by orders of magnitude. This should enhance the filter's dynamic range, which is essential in demanding filtering applications like ultrasound optical tomography.

DOI
10.1117/12.874009

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Thulium-doped crystals are considered for programmable filtering. Such a filter can be achieved by Spectral Hole Burning (SHB). One optically pumps the active ions into a long-lived shelving state, opening a narrow transparency window in the crystal absorption band. We investigate a new shelving scheme in Tm:YAG where the thulium ions are pumped into a ground state nuclear Zeeman sublevel, instead of their natural 10ms-lifetime metastable state. The shelving time is increased to several seconds, reducing the residual population in the transparency window by orders of magnitude. This should enhance the filter's dynamic range, which is essential in demanding filtering applications like ultrasound optical tomography.
With their optical wavelength in the near infrared (790--800 nm) and their unique spectroscopic properties at cryogenic temperatures, thulium-doped crystals are at the center of many architectures linked to classical signal processing and quantum information. In this work, we focus on Tm-doped YSO, a compound that was left aside in the mid-1990s due to its rather short optical coherence lifetime. By means of time-resolved hole-burning spectroscopy, we investigate the anisotropic enhanced nuclear Zeeman effect and demonstrate deep, sub-MHz, persistent spectral hole burning under specific magnetic field orientation, and magnitude. By estimating the experimental parameters corresponding to a real-scale ultrasound optical tomography setup using Tm:YSO as a spectral filter, we validate Tm:YSO as a promising compound for medical imaging in the human body.
We report on light slowing down in a rare earth ion doped crystal by persistent spectral hole burning. The absence of motion of the active ions, the large inhomogeneous broadening, the small homogeneous width and the long lifetime of the hyperfine shelving states make this material convenient for the burning of narrow persistent spectral holes. Since the hole can be burnt long before the arrival of the input signal, there is no need for a strong coupling field, illuminating the sample simultaneously with the input signal, in contrast with procedures such as Electromagnetically Induced Transparency or Coherent Population Oscillations. Analyzing the slowing down process, we point out the role played by off resonance atoms where most of the incoming information is carried over while the pulse is confined within the sample.
We obtained a long-time-storage mechanism for spectral features in thulium ions doped into YAG by applying a magnetic field that splits the electronic ground state. We show experimentally that the storage time can be more than 30 s, which is 3 orders of magnitude longer than that of the metastable state that normally is used for information storage in this material. Level splitting and storage lifetimes for various magnetic field strengths of as much as 5 T were investigated. This storage mechanism will be relevant in the many coherent transient-based signal-processing schemes in which Tm:YAG is being used, and we demonstrate long-time storage in a basic data storage application.
The creation of well-understood structures using spectral hole burning is an important task in the use of technologies based on rare-earth ion-doped crystals. We apply a series of different techniques to model and improve the frequency dependent population change in the atomic level structure of thulium yttrium gallium garnet (Tm:YGG). In particular we demonstrate that, at zero applied magnetic field, numerical solutions to frequency-dependent three-level rate equations show good agreement with spectral hole-burning results. This allows us to predict spectral structures given a specific hole-burning sequence, the underpinning spectroscopic material properties, and the relevant laser parameters. This enables us to largely eliminate power-dependent hole broadening through the use of adiabatic hole-burning pulses. Although this system of rate equations shows good agreement at zero field, the addition of a magnetic field results in unexpected spectral diffusion proportional to the induced Tm ion magnetic-dipole moment and average magnetic-field strength, which, through the quadratic Zeeman effect, dominates the optical spectrum over long timescales. Our results allow optimization of the preparation process for spectral structures in a large variety of rare-earth ion-doped materials for quantum memories and other applications.
Abstract Rare-earth ion-doped crystals are of great interest for quantum memories, a central component in future quantum repeaters. To assess the promise of 1 % Tm3+-doped yttrium gallium garnet (Tm:YGG), we report measurements of optical coherence and energy-level lifetimes of its 3H 6 ↔ 3 H4 transition at a temperature of around 500 mK and various magnetic fields. Using spectral hole burning (SHB), we find hyperfine ground-level (Zeeman level) lifetimes of several minutes at magnetic fields of less than 1000 G. We also measure coherence time exceeding one millisecond using two-pulse photon echoes. Three-pulse photon echo and SHB measurements reveal that due to spectral diffusion, the effective coherence time reduces to a few µs over a timescale of around two hundred seconds. Finally, temporal and frequency-multiplexed storage of optical pulses using the atomic frequency comb protocol is demonstrated. Our results suggest Tm:YGG to be promising for multiplexed photonic quantum memory for quantum repeaters.
We report on light slowing down in a rare-earth-metal-ion-doped crystal by persistent spectral hole burning. The absence of motion of the active ions, the large inhomogeneous broadening, the small homogeneous width, and the long lifetime of the hyperfine shelving states make this material convenient for the burning of narrow persistent spectral holes. Since the hole can be burnt long before the arrival of the input signal, there is no need for a strong-coupling field, illuminating the sample simultaneously with the input signal, in contrast with procedures such as electromagnetically induced transparency or coherent population oscillations. Analyzing the slowing down process, we point out the role played by the off-resonant atom. Most of the incoming information is carried over to off-resonant atoms, while the pulse is confined within the sample. The observed speed-of-light reduction factor exceeds 105{10}^{5}105.