Electric control of collective atomic coherence in an erbium-doped solid

Abstract

View the article online for updates and enhancements. Abstract. We demonstrate the fast and accurate control of the evolution of collective atomic coherences in an erbium-doped solid using external electric fields. This is achieved by controlling the inhomogeneous broadening of erbium ions emitting at 1536 nm using an electric field gradient, thanks to the linear Stark effect. The manipulation of atomic coherence is characterized with the collective spontaneous emission (optical free induction decay (FID)) emitted by the sample after an optical excitation, which does not require any previous preparation of the atoms. We show that controlled dephasing and rephasing of the atoms by the electric field result in collapses and revivals of the optical FID. Our results show that the use of external electric fields does not introduce any substantial decoherence and enables the manipulation of collective atomic coherence with a very high degree of precision on the timescale of tens of nanoseconds. This provides an interesting resource for photonic quantum state storage and quantum state manipulation. Contents

Dynamic control of Purcell enhanced emission of erbium ions in nanoparticles

“…The control of collective light emission from ensembles of atoms in free space has been demonstrated 11 , 12 . Experiments toward the dynamic control of emission of the cavity-enhanced spontaneous emission rate have been so far mostly performed with semi-conductor quantum dots featuring short optical and spin coherence time 13 – 16 , with Raman schemes with single atoms 17 and ions 18 , and by modifying the local optical environment of rare-earth ion-doped (REI) crystals 19 , 20 .…”

Dynamic control of Purcell enhanced emission of erbium ions in nanoparticles

“…The control of collective light emission from ensembles of atoms in free space has been demonstrated [9,10]. Experiments towards the dynamic control of emission of the cavity enhanced spontaneous emission rate have been so far mostly performed with semi-conductor quantum dots featuring short optical and spin coherence time [11,12] or with Raman schemes with single atoms [13,14].…”

Quantum repeaters with individual rare-earth ions at telecommunication wavelengths

“…Due to this lack of symmetry, the orientation of the dipole moments and their magnitudes, and hence their dipole-dipole interaction strengths, are unknown. Previous measurements of the linear Stark shift of Er 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 [66] allow the calculation of the projection of the electricdipole moment difference onto the direction of the externally applied electric field to be approximately 0.84 × 10 −31 Cm [67]. The dipole moment difference for 151 Eu 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 can be as high as ∆µ Eu = 0.81 × 10 −31 Cm [68], resulting in the shift of the transition frequency of 10 and 0.01 MHz for r ij = 1 and 10 nm, respectively.…”