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Optics Letters

Long-time-storage mechanism for Tm:YAG in a magnetic field

Nicklas Ohlsson, Mattias Nilsson, Stefan Kröll, R. Mohan

Published Mar 15, 2003• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1364/ol.28.000450

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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.

Annual Meeting Optical Society of America•Jan 1, 1988•0 citations
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.
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.
Rare-earth-doped crystals have been used for optical signal processing and storage applications. In this dissertation, their potential for quantum computing applications is explored. In one quantum computing scheme, information is stored in nuclear spin states and this information is then processed by using optical pulses through the coupling of these nuclear spin states to a common electronic level. To implement this scheme, nuclear spin states and coupling of these nuclear spin states to a common electronic level is required. Preliminary work in rare-earth materials like Pr3+ and Eu3+ has shown promising results regarding their suitability for quantum computing applications. One particular problem with these materials is that their transition wavelengths are only accessible with dye lasers. These lasers are inherently unstable, and currently few available systems exhibit the stability required for quantum computing applications. An alternative choice was to investigate other rare-earth ions like thulium. Thulium has a transition wavelength that can be accessed with diode lasers, which are commercially available, easy to stabilize, and compact. This dissertation is based on our investigations of Tm3+:YAG for quantum computing applications. Investigations involved a detailed characterization of the material. Nuclear spin states, in Tm3+:YAG, were obtained by applying an external magnetic field to the sample. First, interaction of an external magnetic field with the thulium ions at various sites in the crystal was analyzed. This analysis was used to measure the magnetic anisotropy in the material. These results show that it is possible, with the suitable choice of the magnetic orientation and the site in the crystal, to build a working 3-level quantum system. In the demonstration of single qubit operations in Tm3+:YAG, we first theoretically studied the effect of Gaussian spatial beam on the single qubit operations. Later on, we experimentally prepared a single isolated ensemble of ions in the inhomogeneously broadened absorption profile of the medium. This single isolated ensemble of ions was used as a test-bed to implement the single qubit operations. We also isolated two ensembles of ions in the inhomogeneous absorption profile of the medium. The interaction between these two isolated ensembles of ions was also studied.
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.
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.
We report on spin coherence lifetime extension in Tm3+{}^{3+}3+:YAG obtained through dynamically decoupling the thulium spins from their magnetic environment. The coherence lifetime reached with a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill sequence revealed a 450-fold extension [$\ensuremath{\sim}$$(230\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}30)$ ms] with respect to previously measured values. Comparison to a simple theoretical model allowed us to estimate the correlation time of the fluctuations of the ground-level transition frequency to $(172\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}30)$ $\ensuremath{\mu}$s at 1.7 K. For attaining efficient decoupling sequences, we developed a strategy inspired by the zero-first-order Zeeman effect to minimize the large inhomogeneous broadening of the ground-level spin transition.
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.