Abstract
High-quality rare-earth-ion (REI) doped materials are a prerequisite for many applications such as quantum memories, ultra-high-resolution optical spectrum analyzers and information processing. Compared to bulk materials, REI doped powders offer low-cost fabrication and a greater range of accessible material systems. Here we show that crystal properties, such as nuclear spin lifetime, are strongly affected by mechanical treatment, and that spectral hole burning can serve as a sensitive method to characterize the quality of REI doped powders. We focus on the specific case of thulium doped (Tm:YAG). Different methods for obtaining the powders are compared and the influence of annealing on the spectroscopic quality of powders is investigated on a few examples. We conclude that annealing can reverse some detrimental effects of powder fabrication and, in certain cases, the properties of the bulk material can be reached. Our results may be applicable to other impurities and other crystals, including color centers in nano-structured diamond.
Highlights
Rare-earth-ion (REI) doped bulk crystals cooled to cryogenic temperatures are used for a multitude of applications
We find that induced damage and strain in the crystal lattice, which does not affect x-ray diffraction (XRD) or scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements, can produce large variations in the measured lowtemperature dynamics of the powders that are observed using spectral hole burning (SHB) techniques
We study the impact of fabrication and annealing methods on nuclear spin lifetimes Ta as well as on hole linewidths Γ
Summary
Rare-earth-ion (REI) doped bulk crystals cooled to cryogenic temperatures are used for a multitude of applications. Fabrication or manipulation of REI doped powders can induce stress, especially during grinding or milling, that creates strain in the crystal lattice [12, 13]. The goal of this work is to study REI doped powders at temperatures near 1.6 K and improve their properties to reach those of bulk materials. We find that induced damage and strain in the crystal lattice, which does not affect XRD or SEM measurements, can produce large variations in the measured lowtemperature dynamics of the powders that are observed using SHB techniques. SHB is a well-suited technique to reveal the presence of residual damage in powders due to fabrication and to evaluate the effectiveness of methods used to reduce strain and improve material quality, such as thermal annealing
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