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Optics Letters

Observation of photon echo in Er^3+:YAG at 1527 µm

Y. Zhang, Xiao A. Shen, Ravinder Kachru

Published Jul 15, 1997• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report what is to our knowledge the first experimental observation of two- and three-pulse echoes in Er(3+) :YAG at 1.527microm . The experiment was performed on the transition from the (4)I(15/2) ground state to the lowest Stark level of the (4)I(13/2) excited state. The corresponding homogeneous dephasing time was measured to be approximately 50ns at 1 and 7K. In addition, three-pulse echo decay indicated a lifetime of the spectral grating of ~30micros . Implications of these results for optical data storage and optical signal processing are discussed.

DOI
10.1364/ol.22.001068

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Integrated Photonics Research•Jan 1, 1992•0 citations
We report what is to our knowledge the first experimental observation of two- and three-pulse echoes in Er(3+) :YAG at 1.527microm . The experiment was performed on the transition from the (4)I(15/2) ground state to the lowest Stark level of the (4)I(13/2) excited state. The corresponding homogeneous dephasing time was measured to be approximately 50ns at 1 and 7K. In addition, three-pulse echo decay indicated a lifetime of the spectral grating of ~30micros . Implications of these results for optical data storage and optical signal processing are discussed.
We have measured the optical dephasing time of Er(3+) transitions near 1.5 microm in the two crystallographically inequivalent sites of Y(2)SiO(5), using an external-cavity diode laser amplified by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Two-pulse photon echoes were observed at zero field and in magnetic fields up to 55kG, with dephasing times as long as 580 micros (corresponding to a linewidth of 550 Hz). Stimulated echoes were also measured and showed evidence of spectral diffusion during the 13-ms lifetime of the (4)I(13/2) level.
The photon echo experiment is a method of measuring the homogeneous dephasing time (T2) from which the homogeneous linewidth of an optical transition can be calculated.In this thesis, the theories of linewidths of transitions and of the development of a photon echo are presented.Also discussed is the experimental setup by which the first photon echoes in the rare-earth terbium were observed and measured.The decays of echo intensity with laser pulse separation at the externally applied fields of 45 KG and 25 KG were plotted and from these plots a homogeneous dephasing time of HO nanoseconds was calculated.Data at 15 KG were taken, but because of the non-exponential behavior of the decay, Tj was not calculated.At 0 KG, no echo was observed, implying a decrease of the dephasing time below 15 KG.
High-bandwidth accumulated spectral gratings are experimentally studied in Tm3+:YAG by the stimulated-photon-echo technique with a mode-locked picosecond Ti:sapphire laser system. The experimental results show that the spectral grating builds up and decays on the time scale of the metastable-state lifetime (∼10 ms), provided that the time interval of accumulating shots is of the order of the excited-state lifetime (800 µs). An echo efficiency of the order of 0.1% was achieved with pulse intensities 2 orders of magnitude less than those needed for a single-shot process. These results fit well an analytic solution of the Bloch equations and a three-level system relaxation model.
Eu-doped yttrium orthosilicate (Eu(3+) : Y2SiO5) had been a subject being investigated for coherent time-domain optical memory and information processing applications since its ultraslow optical dephasing was discovered several years ago. In this crystal the weakly allowed (7)F0 - (5)D0 transition of europium ions exhibits a sufficient long dephasing time and no spectral difli.usion on a time scale of several hours at low temperature, thus an information pattern or data can be stored as a population grating in the ground state hyperfine levels. On the other hand, the study on photon-echo relaxation shows that the dephasing time T2 of Eu (3+) and other rare-earth ions doped YAG, YAlO3 strongly depends on the intensity of the excitation pulses. In Eu (3+) :YAlO3, an exponential decay of photon-echo with T2 = 53 microseconds if the excitation pulses are weak (5 vJ/pulse) was observed. However, when the excitation pulses are strong (80 pJ/pulse) they observed a much shortened T2 with a highly nonexponential decay pattern. The conclusion they derived is that the intensity-dependent dephasing rate effects are quite general, and it depends on how much the excitation intensity varies. In this paper we use transient grating formation technique showing that a temporal lattice distortion may only occur along crystal c axis, caused by EU (3+) excitation. At high excitation level the produced exciton in conduction band may also couple to the dynamical lattice relaxation process, giving rise to an apparently much shortened dephasing time.
The backward stimulated echo has been considered as a novel high-speed high-density optical data storage method. But its potential application has been confined to transient dynamic memory because of relatively short lifetime of optical coherence inside low-temperature solids. Here we report the longest observed storage time of at least six hours in the 581.8 nm7F0-5D0 transition of eu 3+ -doped YAlO3 crystal at 2°K. The experiments are performed using YAG-pumped pulsed dye lasers, beamsplitters and optical delay lines to produce five DATA pulses, at 20 nsec intervals, and WRITE and READ pulses. The measured echo intensity as a function of storage time has exponential decay time of 3.8 hours. This very long storage time is due to the very small effective nuclear magnetic moments of Eu3+ ions, and is consistent with the long lifetime of spectral hole in this system. We also observed that the signal fidelity is not noticeably affected by the number of DATA pulses and the long storage time.
Recently we reported the first photon echo experiments in Er-doped fibers, and described their application to ultrafast time domain signal processing [1]. Our previous results were obtained with absorbing Er-doped fibers at 4°K, and our signals at 1.53µm were attenuated by the fiber. In this paper we report photon echo experiments with Er-doped amplifiers. We expect the photon echo process in amplifiers to yield strong echoes, perhaps stronger then the input signal. This could be important for signal processing applications. To our knowledge this is the first demonstration of photon echo in any inverted system.