Rare-earth-doped materials for applications in quantum information storage and signal processing
Research highlights
► Rare-earth materials offer key properties for quantum memory and signal processing. ► Physics and properties of rare-earth optical transitions in solids are reviewed. ► Details of 47 promising optical transitions are tabulated and compared. ► A new narrow-band dynamic filtering method using spectral hole burning is discussed. ► Results of successful passive laser phase noise suppression are presented.
Section snippets
Importance of rare-earth-doped materials for quantum information applications
Manipulating coherent quantum superposition states of atoms using light holds enormous potential for future information technology. Quantum information applications offer unprecedented computational capacities via quantum computing, unconditional communication security via quantum cryptography, and reversibly and efficiently mapping the quantum information in a light field to the quantum state of a material [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. The development of quantum information systems critically
Overview of rare-earth material properties
The rare-earth ions, or lanthanides, form a special group of transition elements in the periodic table. Triply-ionized rare-earth ions have a partially filled 4f shell, shielded from the environment by the outer filled 5s2 and 5p6 electron shells. The partially filled 4fN shell gives rise to narrow spectral lines due to inner shell 4f–4f transitions that span the far infrared to the vacuum ultraviolet. Even when doped into a crystalline host, the shielding of the 4fN levels causes the crystal
Survey of rare-earth-doped materials
Extensive studies of rare-earth materials with long coherence lifetimes have been reviewed by Macfarlane and Shelby [49], Macfarlane [38], [50], Sun [31], and Sun et al. [51]. Since rare-earth ions with an even number of electrons can give singlet electronic crystal field levels that have no electronic magnetic moment to first order, initial studies focused on non-Kramers ions such as Eu3+, Pr3+, and Tm3+ doped into host materials with small nuclear magnetic moments or small abundances of
Spectral diffusion and decoherence of ensembles
The finite lifetime T1 of the excited electronic state establishes the minimum rate of decoherence, limiting the coherence lifetime T2 to a maximum value of T2=2T1. Homogeneous decoherence mechanisms, such as the excited-state lifetime and elastic and inelastic phonon scattering at higher temperatures produce a simple exponential decay of stored phase information with time constant T2, corresponding to a Lorentzian spectral linewidth Γh of a single optical center with a full-width at
Rare-earth materials for frequency and phase stabilization of laser sources in QIS
The success of implementing rare-earth materials for applications in QIS and SSH is dependent on the supporting and enabling technologies such as laser sources, detectors, new classes of materials, and cryogenics. Specialized laser sources with narrow sub-kilohertz linewidths and a very high degree of frequency, phase, and amplitude stability are an enabling component for many of these new applications.
Frequency references based on narrow spectral holes in the materials or on narrow
Specialized requirements and tradeoffs for quantum information applications
A universal requirement for materials involves achieving slow decoherence rates relative to the transition rate [99], [111]. As a result, large transition oscillator strengths and near-radiative limited excited-state lifetimes are desirable. Large oscillator strengths are also required to achieve the high optical densities needed for efficient storage. Other requirements and tradeoffs for QIS applications depend on specific protocols. For CRIB and gradient-echo memory, narrow inhomogeneous
Summary
The feasibility and eventual practicality of solid-state coherent optical information storage and processing devices depends on special resonant optical materials, among which rare-earth ions doped into dielectric crystals at cryogenic temperatures are one of the most promising candidates. Motivated by this, we provided a comprehensive overview of the properties of rare-earth-activated solids as well as a summary of the relevant materials studied by our laboratory and by other laboratories. In
Acknowledgements
The crystal for the passive dynamic spectral filtering method was grown by Scientific Materials Corp. of Bozeman, MT, USA. Funding for this research was provided in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant nos. F49620-97-1-0411, F49620-98-1-0171, and F49620-00-1-0314, and by the National Science Foundation under Grant no. 0903937-WR121. T.B. wishes to acknowledge financial support through the University of San Francisco faculty development fund.
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