Efficient and long-lived Zeeman-sublevel atomic population storage in an erbium-doped glass fiber

Abstract

Long-lived population storage in optically pumped levels of rare-earth ions doped into solids, referred to as persistent spectral hole burning, is of significant fundamental and technological interest. However, the demonstration of deep and persistent holes in rare-earth ion doped amorphous hosts, e.g. glasses, has remained an open challenge since many decades -- a fact that motivates our work towards a better understanding of the interaction between impurities and vibrational modes in glasses. Here we report the first observation and detailed characterization of such holes in an erbium-doped silica glass fiber cooled to below 1 K. We demonstrate population storage in electronic Zeeman-sublevels of the erbium ground state with lifetimes up to 30 seconds and 80\% spin polarization. In addition to its fundamental aspect, our investigation reveals a potential technological application of rare-earth ion doped amorphous materials, including at telecommunication wavelength.

5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

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• Probing interacting two-level systems with rare-earth ions
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• Hole burning experiments and modeling in erbium-doped silica glass fibers down to millikelvin temperatures: evidence for ultra-long population storage
• Erbium Quantum Memory Platform with Long Optical Coherence via Back-End of Line Deposition on Foundry-Fabricated Photonics