The signals of photon echo (PE) are investigated firstly in a ruby crystal doped only by the 53 Cr isotope ions in a concentration of 0.03 – 0,05 wt%. The optical experiments were performed in backward regime at the wavelength of 693.4 nm both with a low magnetic field (200 G) and without it. Since the 53 Cr isotope ions have hyperfine structure of levels the special attention was paid to the study of the stimulated photon echo and primarily to the investigation of its decay kinetics. It is established that this decay has a form which is typical to the signals of long-lived PE. But in contrast to the long-lived PE the decay time in our case is less than the lifetime of the excited 2E(Ē) state. The signals of primary photon echo and stimulated photon echo at a low longitudinal magnetic field and their decay curves are investigated. We observed the beats of temporal shape of these signals with a period of several tens of nanoseconds. Theoretical analysis shows that they are due to the hyperfine interaction of valence electrons of 53 Cr isotope ions with their own nuclei. The obtained decay curves allow us to estimate the phase relaxation time at the presence of a magnetic field. It proves to be equal to 98 ns. The spectrum of stimulated photon echo signal in the doped ruby exposed to a magnetic field is measured.
A detailed experimental study is reported of the decay of circularly polarized photon echoes as a function of Cr concentration in samples ranging from 0.006 to 1.2 wt.%
Cr2O3 in
Al2O3. The decay is found to be independent of temperature in the liquid-helium range and generally depends on the pulse separation $\ensuremath{\tau}$ as $\mathrm{exp}(\ensuremath{-}K{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\frac{1}{2}})$ with the decay constant
K proportional to the square root of the Cr concentration. The measured decay is independent of external magnetic field in the range 1.5-6 kG except at 1.06 kG, where modified decays are observed. A theoretical analysis is made of photon-echo decay in terms of spin flips of echo ions resulting from Cr-Cr magnetic interactions and yields good agreement with the observed decays. Spectral diffusion, modified for photon echoes, is shown not to be an important effect. However, anomalously slow decay is observed in some samples when the laser is tuned to the long-wavelength tail of the sample absorption line and the spectral-diffusion mechanism may apply here. The photon-echo-decay measurements are compared with spin-resonance and available spin-echo data in ruby. Also, it is inferred that resonant optical energy transfer is not an important photon-echo-decay mechanism even in the darkest sample studied.
Measurements of photon-echo decays in dilute ruby (
Cr2O3 concentration of 0.018 at. %) in magnetic fields up to 29.5 kG are reported. Echoes from the
4A2(-3/2)${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{2}$E,E\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}(-1/2) and
4A2(-1/2)${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{2}$E,E\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}(-1/2) transitions have dephasing times (
T2) that are directly proportional to the ratio of the magnetic field (B) to the temperature (T), for the range 2.5B/T20 kG/K. A transition in the decay from exponential to nonexponential behavior for B/T>10 kG/K is observed. Decay times for the
4A2(-1/2)${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{2}$E,E(-1/2) echo are roughly a factor of 3 longer than for the
4A2(-3/2)${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\leftrightarrows}}}^{2}$E,E\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}(-1/2) echo. We attribute the lengthening of
T2 with increasing B/T to the suppression of Cr-Cr spin flip-flops as the population of the upper
4A2 levels decreases.
A detailed analysis of the photon-echo decay in dilute ruby is presented. The experimental results are in quantitative agreement with an echo-decay theory based on the magnetic interaction between the Cr electronic spin and neighboring Al nuclear magnetic moments. Specifically, the following photon-echo properties are explained by the Cr-Al interaction: (i) modulation of the echo as a function of pulse separation time, (ii) the rapid decay of the echo from the
4A(ms=23) to
2E(ms=21) transition, (iii) the dependence of the echo on the direction and magnitude of an external magnetic field, (iv) the echo behavior at the 2.06- and 4.12-kG level crossings, and (v) the photon-echo decay in low magnetic fields. In addition, the experiments presented here show that the Cr-Al magnetic interactions in the
2E excited state are roughly the same as the corresponding interactions in the
4A2 ground state. The relationship of the photon-echo results to recent fluorescence-linewidth measurements is discussed.