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Physical Review B

Zeeman-level lifetimes in Er3+:Y2SiO5

Sara R. Hastings-Simon, Björn Lauritzen, M. U. Staudt, Jacobus L. M. van Mechelen, Christoph Simon, Hugues de Riedmatten, Mikael Afzelius, Nicolas Gisin

Published Aug 11, 2008• 56 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present measurements of Zeeman-level population lifetimes in ${\text{Er}}^{3+}:{\text{Y}}_{2}{\text{SiO}}_{5}$ at low magnetic fields and low temperatures. Using spectral hole burning spectroscopy, we investigate the dynamics and temperature dependence of the hole structure due to the Zeeman interaction. Evidence for population storage in Zeeman levels with lifetimes of up to 130 ms is found in the form of long-lived spectral holes and antiholes. We also observe that a subset of the erbium ions exhibit very long-lived holes with lifetimes as long as 60 s at 2.8 K.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.78.085410

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We present measurements of Zeeman-level population lifetimes in Er3+:Y2SiO5{\text{Er}}^{3+}:{\text{Y}}_{2}{\text{SiO}}_{5}Er3+:Y2​SiO5​ at low magnetic fields and low temperatures. Using spectral hole burning spectroscopy, we investigate the dynamics and temperature dependence of the hole structure due to the Zeeman interaction. Evidence for population storage in Zeeman levels with lifetimes of up to 130 ms is found in the form of long-lived spectral holes and antiholes. We also observe that a subset of the erbium ions exhibit very long-lived holes with lifetimes as long as 60 s at 2.8 K.
Long-lived population storage in optically pumped levels of rare-earth ions doped into solids, referred to as persistent spectral hole burning, is of significant fundamental and technological interest. However, the demonstration of deep and persistent holes in rare-earth ion doped amorphous hosts, e.g., glasses, has remained an open challenge for many decades---a fact that motivates our work towards a better understanding of the interaction between impurities and vibrational modes in glasses. Here we report the observation and detailed characterization of such holes in an erbium-doped silica glass fiber cooled to below 1 K. We demonstrate population storage in electronic Zeeman sublevels of the erbium ground state with lifetimes up to 30 seconds and 80% spin polarization. In addition to its fundamental aspect, our investigation reveals a potential technological application of rare-earth ion doped amorphous materials, including at telecommunication wavelength.
We use spectral hole burning to investigate spin dynamics within the electronic Zeeman sublevels of the ground state of the erbium ions in erbium-doped fibers (EDF). Conducted at ultra-low temperatures and under varying magnetic fields, our study reveals distinct changes in spin relaxation dynamics across different conditions. We identified three decay components at approximately 7 mK, with one achieving spin lifetimes of over 9 hours under optimal conditions, while two components were observed at higher temperatures. The fairly stable relative weights of the decay components across conditions suggest distinct ion populations contributing to the observed relaxation dynamics. While earlier studies struggled to account for all decay components at higher temperatures, our approach successfully models spin dynamics across all observed decay components, using a consistent set of underlying mechanisms, including spin flip-flop interactions, direct coupling to two-level systems, and Raman-type processes, and distinguishes the decay components by the strengths with which these mechanisms contribute. These results suggest EDFs' potential as a promising candidate for quantum memory applications, with further room for optimization.
We have measured spectral diffusion in Er3+-doped YLiF4 from the time dependence of spectral hole shapes. The holes were burned in the absorption corresponding to the transition between the lowest Zeeman components of the 4I15/2(1) and 4F9/2(1) levels of Er3+:YLiF4 at 15298.6 cm−1 and were scanned by rapid Zeeman tuning of the erbium energy levels. In an external magnetic field of 26 kG, which supresses erbium–erbium spin flips, the mechanism for spectral diffusion involved local field fluctuations that are due to 19F nuclear spin flips in the perturbing field of the erbium electron spins. Numerical simulation of the fluorine spin dynamics gives semiquantitative agreement with the observed time-dependent hole shapes.
Erbium-doped silica fiber (EDF) is evaluated as a telecom-band quantum-memory platform via spectral hole burning at millikelvin temperatures. We map spin-population decay versus temperature (about 7 to 2400 mK) and magnetic field (0 to 200 mT), revealing two relaxation components above about 80 mK and, at about 7 mK, a third, ultra-slow component enabling more than 9 h population storage under optimized field. The relative component weights are nearly condition-independent, consistent with distinct ion classes. A single phenomenological model, combining Er-Er flip-flops, a TLS-mediated direct process with field and temperature scaling, and a Raman-like term, fits all data using shared exponents while allowing mechanism weights to vary between classes. We also observe a Lorentzian-to-Gaussian hole-shape crossover below about 80 mK, pointing to changing broadening mechanisms. These results establish long-lived spin-population storage in standard EDF and delineate a practical operating window. They motivate denser measurements across the below-80 mK crossover, isotope-resolved tests, and complementary optical-coherence studies.
We demonstrate a new mechanism for optical spectral hole burning in which population is stored in electronic Zeeman sublevels. This is shown by optical pumping the ground-state Kramers doublet of the 4I9/2^{4}\mathrm{I}_{9/2}4I9/2​${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{2}$H11/2{\mathrm{H}}_{11/2}H11/2​ (6248.9 A\r{}) and 4I9/2^{4}\mathrm{I}_{9/2}4I9/2​${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{4}$G5/2{\mathrm{G}}_{5/2}G5/2​ (5777.1 A\r{}) transitions of LaF3{\mathrm{LaF}}_{3}LaF3​:Nd3+{\mathrm{Nd}}^{3+}Nd3+ with a narrow-band cw dye laser. Experiments were carried out at 1.6 K in external fields of \ensuremath{\sim}100 G. The Zeeman shift of the resulting antiholes and holes makes an assignment of these structures possible. Hole recovery times of hundreds of milliseconds are shorter than expected at these low temperatures and fields and provide evidence for optical spectral diffusion caused by mutual spin flips in the ground state.