DC-powered Fe3+:sapphire Maser and its Sensitivity to Ultraviolet Light

The zero-field Fe3+:sapphire whispering-gallery-mode maser oscillator exhibits several alluring features: Its output is many orders of magnitude brighter than that of an active hydrogen maser and thus far less degraded by spontaneous-emission (Schawlow-Townes) and/or receiving-amplifier noise. Its oscillator loop is confined to a piece of mono-crystalline rock bolted into a metal can. Its quiet amplification combined with high resonator Q provide the ingredients for exceptionally low phase noise. We here concentrate on novelties addressing the fundamental conundrums and technical challenges that impede progress. (1) Roasting: The "mase-ability" of sapphire depends significantly on the chemical conditions under which it is grown and heat-treated. We provide some fresh details and nuances here. (2) Simplification: This paper obviates the need for a Ka-band synthesizer: it describes how a 31.3 GHz loop oscillator, operating on the preferred WG pump mode, incorporating Pound locking, was built from low-cost components. (3) "Dark Matter": A Siegman-level analysis of the experimental data determines the substitutional concentration of Fe3+ in HEMEX to be less than a part per billion prior to roasting and up to a few hundred ppb afterwards. Chemical assays, using different techniques (incl. glow discharge mass spectra spectroscopy and neutron activation analysis) consistently indicate, however, that HEMEX contains iron at concentrations of a few parts per million. Drawing from several forgotten-about/under-appreciated papers, this substantial discrepancy is addressed. (4) Excitons: Towards providing a new means of controlling the Fe3+:sapph. system, a cryogenic sapphire ring was illuminated, whilst masing, with UV light at wavelengths corresponding to known electronic and charge-transfer (thus valence-altering) transitions. Preliminary experiments are reported.Comment: pdf only; submitted to the proceedings of the 24th European Frequency and Time Forum, 13-15th April, 201

Static Envelope Patterns in Composite Resonances Generated by Level Crossing in Optical Toroidal Microcavities

We study level crossing in the optical whispering-gallery (WG) modes by using toroidal microcavities. Experimentally, we image the stationary envelope patterns of the composite optical modes that arise when WG modes of different wavelengths coincide in frequency. Numerically, we calculate crossings of levels that correspond with the observed degenerate modes, where our method takes into account the not perfectly transverse nature of their field polarizations. In addition, we analyze anticrossing with a large avoidance gap between modes of the same azimuthal number

Pulsed Electron Spin Resonance of an Organic Microcrystal by Dispersive Readout

We establish a testbed system for the development of high-sensitivity Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) techniques for small samples at cryogenic temperatures. Our system consists of a Niobium Nitride thin-film planar superconducting microresonator designed to have a concentrated mode volume to couple to a small amount of paramagnetic material, and to be resilient to magnetic fields of up to 400 mT. At 65 mK we measure high-cooperativity coupling ($C \approx 19$) to an organic radical microcrystal containing $10^{12}$ spins in a pico-litre volume. We detect the spin-lattice decoherence rate via the dispersive frequency shift of the resonator. Techniques such as these could be suitable for applications in quantum information as well as for pulsed ESR interrogation of very few spins and could provide insights into the surface chemistry of, for example, the material defects in superconducting quantum processors.Comment: 8 pages 5 figure

`Maser-in-a-Shoebox': a portable plug-and-play maser device at room-temperature and zero magnetic-field

Masers, the microwave analogues of lasers, have seen a renaissance owing to the discovery of gain media that mase at room-temperature and zero-applied magnetic field. However, despite the ease with which the devices can be demonstrated under ambient conditions, achieving the ubiquity and portability which lasers enjoy has to date remained challenging. We present a maser device with a miniaturized maser cavity, gain material and laser pump source that fits within the size of a shoebox. The gain medium used is pentacene-doped in para-terphenyl and it is shown to give a strong masing signal with a peak power of -5 dBm even within a smaller form factor. The device is also shown to mase at different frequencies within a small range of 1.5 MHz away from the resonant frequency. The portability and simplicity of the device, which weighs under 5 kg, paves the way for demonstrators particularly in the areas of low-noise amplifiers, quantum sensors, cavity quantum electrodynamics and long-range communications

N-Heteroacenes as an Organic Gain Medium for Room-Temperature Masers

The development of future quantum devices such as the maser, i.e., the microwave analog of the laser, could be well-served by the exploration of chemically tunable organic materials. Current iterations of room-temperature organic solid-state masers are composed of an inert host material that is doped with a spin-active molecule. In this work, we systematically modulated the structure of three nitrogen-substituted tetracene derivatives to augment their photoexcited spin dynamics and then evaluated their potential as novel maser gain media by optical, computational, and electronic paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. To facilitate these investigations, we adopted an organic glass former, 1,3,5-tri(1-naphthyl)benzene to act as a universal host. These chemical modifications impacted the rates of intersystem crossing, triplet spin polarization, triplet decay, and spin–lattice relaxation, leading to significant consequences on the conditions required to surpass the maser threshold

Level Crossing in Toroidal on-Chip Microcavities

Level crossing between optical whispering-gallery modes is studied in toroidal microcavities. We photograph azimuthal and radial envelope patterns of crossed optical modes. We also investigate anti-crossing between modes and polarization evolution