Optical hole burning in ruby
- 1 February 1980
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 21 (3), 926-936
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.21.926
Abstract
We report experimental and theoretical studies of optical hole burning in the inhomogeneous line of ruby at low temperatures. Both Stark-shifting and pump-probe techniques using narrow-band single-frequency lasers were employed. In addition to the observation of narrow holes, we have found that a large (up to 70%) decrease in absorption occurs outside the hole and that the relative size of this decrease is constant over the entire inhomogeneous line. This effect is ascribed to fast resonant cross-spin relaxation in the ground-state levels which drives all spins within the optically pumped volume to a common spin temperature. A theoretical model is formulated which describes the power-broadened hole shapes as well as the off-resonance decrease in the absorption coefficient. Fair agreement with experiment is obtained for the case of a magnetic field applied along the axis; however, sizable deviations from the theory are seen for zero field. We conclude that further studies are needed to elucidate the nature of the Al superhyperfine-broadening mechanism. An upper limit of 1200 nm is deduced for the size of macroscopically broadened regions in ruby.
Keywords
This publication has 30 references indexed in Scilit:
- Ultraslow Optical Dephasing of La:Physical Review Letters, 1979
- Measurement of the pseudo-stark effect in Pr3+:LaF3 using population hole burning and optical free-induction decayOptics Communications, 1978
- Stark-induced optical transients in rubyOptics Letters, 1978
- Optical measurement of the hyperfine splitting of themetastable state ofin Laby enhanced and saturated absorption spectroscopyPhysical Review B, 1977
- Observation of multiple optical hole burning in rubyOptics Communications, 1977
- Electric field induced shifting of optical holes, fluorescence line narrowing and free induction decay in rubyOptics Communications, 1976
- Observation of hole burning and cross relaxation effects in rubyPhysical Review B, 1975
- Observation of the Optical Analog of the Mössbauer Effect in RubyPhysical Review Letters, 1971
- Laser-Induced Fluorescence-Line Narrowing in RubyPhysical Review Letters, 1970
- Photon EchoesPhysical Review B, 1966