Tapered Optical Fibers Coated with Rare-Earth Complexes for Quantum Applications

Ori Ezrah Mor Markovsky, Tal Ohana, Adrien Borne, Yael Diskin Posner, Maor Asher, Omer Yaffe, Abraham Shanzer, Barak Dayan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Crystals and fibers doped with rare-earth (RE) ions provide the basis for most of today's solid-state optical systems, from lasers and telecom devices to emerging potential quantum applications such as quantum memories and optical to microwave conversion. The two platforms, doped crystals and doped fibers, seem mutually exclusive, each having its own strengths and limitations, the former providing high homogeneity and coherence and the latter offering the advantages of robust optical waveguides. Here we present a hybrid platform that does not rely on doping but rather on coating the waveguide─a tapered silica optical fiber─with a monolayer of complexes, each containing a single RE ion. The complexes offer an identical, tailored environment to each ion, thus minimizing inhomogeneity and allowing tuning of their properties to the desired application. Specifically, we use highly luminescent Yb3+[Zn(II)MC (QXA)] complexes, which isolate the RE ion from the environment and suppress nonradiative decay channels. We demonstrate that the beneficial optical transitions of the Yb3+ are retained after deposition on the tapered fiber and observe an excited-state lifetime of over 0.9 ms, on par with state-of-the-art Yb-doped inorganic crystals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2676-2682
Number of pages7
JournalACS Photonics
Volume9
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Aug 2022

Keywords

  • RE complexes
  • RE ions
  • fluorescence spectroscopy
  • metallacrowns
  • tapered optical fibers

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Biotechnology

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