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Optics Letters

Photon-gated spectral hole burning in Pr^3+:YAG

R. M. Macfarlane, G. Wittmann

Published Aug 15, 1996• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We observed photon-gated spectral hole burning in Pr:YAG and assigned the hole-burning mechanism to selective photoionization of trivalent praseodymium. Gated holes were observed in absorption lines to the two lowest components of the (1)D(2) manifold. At 1.4 K the gating ratio is in excess of 1.5 x 10(4). Strong competition from the transient mechanism of optical pumping of hyperfine levels occurs below 6 K.

DOI
10.1364/ol.21.001289

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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics•Jan 1, 1985•0 citations
We observed photon-gated spectral hole burning in Pr:YAG and assigned the hole-burning mechanism to selective photoionization of trivalent praseodymium. Gated holes were observed in absorption lines to the two lowest components of the (1)D(2) manifold. At 1.4 K the gating ratio is in excess of 1.5 x 10(4). Strong competition from the transient mechanism of optical pumping of hyperfine levels occurs below 6 K.
We have observed photon-gated spectral hole burning, i.e., hole burning that occurs only in the presence of an additional gating-light source. Gating enhancement factors of 10(4) were observed. In BaClF:Sm(2+) this involves two step photoionization of Sm(2+) and leads to persistent holes in the (4)F(0) --> (5)D(0) (687.9-nm) and (7)F(0) --> (5)D(1) (629.7-nm) absorption lines. The hole widths of 25 MHz at 2 K are much narrower than the inhomogeneous broadening of 16 GHz. The action spectrum of the gating shows a threshold behavior around 2.5 eV. Erasing studies show that Sm(3)+ acts as a trap for the released electrons. A remarkable and novel feature is that the holes can be recovered after temperature cycling to 300 K.
Photon-gated hole burning, or selective bleaching enabled by a second light source, has been observed in Co2+{\mathrm{Co}}^{2+}Co2+ in tetrahedral sites of LiGa5{\mathrm{LiGa}}_{5}LiGa5​O8{\mathrm{O}}_{8}O8​. This leads to long-lived spectral holes with a width of \ensuremath{\sim}1 GHz at 1.6 K. It is proposed that two-step photoionization of Co2+{\mathrm{Co}}^{2+}Co2+ is responsible for the hole burning. Much narrower (\ensuremath{\sim}40 MHz) transient holes and antiholes were burned using population storage in nuclear hyperfine levels. These two mechanisms of hole burning are reported here for transition-metal ions for what is believed to be the first time.
Photon-gated hole burning, or selective bleaching enabled by a second light source, has been observed in Co2+{\mathrm{Co}}^{2+}Co2+ in tetrahedral sites of LiGa5{\mathrm{LiGa}}_{5}LiGa5​O8{\mathrm{O}}_{8}O8​. This leads to long-lived spectral holes with a width of \ensuremath{\sim}1 GHz at 1.6 K. It is proposed that two-step photoionization of Co2+{\mathrm{Co}}^{2+}Co2+ is responsible for the hole burning. Much narrower (\ensuremath{\sim}40 MHz) transient holes and antiholes were burned using population storage in nuclear hyperfine levels. These two mechanisms of hole burning are reported here for transition-metal ions for what is believed to be the first time.
Persistent spectral hole-burning (PHB) has been proposed as the essential element of a frequency domain optical storage system1 in which the frequency at which a hole is burned in an inhomogeneously broadened absorption line at low temperatures serves as an additional dimension for the storage of digital information. Essentially all of the mechanisms studied until recently have been single-photon mechanisms, i.e., the photoionduced change leading to hole-burning (writing) for a given center occurs with a certain fixed probability after the absorption of one photon. Such linear, monophotonic processes suffer from the drawback that the act of detecting holes (reading) can also produce changes in the absorption line. Recent modeling studies of the generalized single-photon process2 have shown that thousands to tens of thousands of reads can be obtained from single-photon mechanisms only when the material possesses high quantum efficiency and low absorption cross section. These restrictive requirements do not apply for photon-gated hole-burning mechanisms, i.e., those mechanisms for which hole-burning occurs only in the presence of an additional “gating” light source, because for these mechanisms, reading is performed in the absence of the gating light and is therefore nondestructive.