Engineering closed optical transitions in rare-earth ion crystals

Abstract

We propose a protocol to preserve the spin state of rare-earth ions when they are optically cycled. This technique uses large magnetic fields to increase the probability of an optically excited ion returning to its initial spin state. This Zeeman enhanced cyclicity is shown to be applicable to non-Kramers ions in various crystals irrespective of the site symmetry. The specific example of Pr3+:Y2SiO5 is investigated to demonstrate that the protocol can create closed optical transitions even where the point group symmetry of the site is C1. In this example, the predicted cyclicity exceeds 104. This high level of cyclicity extends the usefulness of rare-earth ion crystals for applications in quantum and classical information processing. We explore the use of this technique to enable single-ion, spin-state optical readout and the creation of ensemble-based spectral features that are robust against optical cycling.