Spin dependency of optical feeding into the Ē( 2E) metastable doublet of ruby

Abstract

An analysis has been made of spin polarization memory in the Ē( 2 E) metastable doublet of Cr 3+ in Al 2O 3 upon broadband optical pumping with unpolarized light. Coefficients describing the relative feeding rates of all four 4 A 2 ground-state levels into the two Ē( 2 E) levels have been obtained. The optical pumping cycle appears to contain a component with Δ m S =±2.