Abstract

For more than a decade photon echoes have been playing a leading role in highresolution nonlinear laser spectroscopy in solid states, in particular, in rare-earth-ion-doped crystals.¹ Since photon echoes in such materials often exhibit 1-μs-to-1-ms long dephasing times, any fluctuations of transition frequencies of the order of MHz to kHz during the echo formation can easily reduce the photon echo intensity. This fact indicates that reduction of the echo signal can be used as a powerful monitor for small changes in the local electric or magnetic field at the ion site. We present here a novel type of spectroscopy, photon-echo demolition spectroscopy, in which the echo signal for some ions is monitored in the presence of the scrambler (second laser) pulse applied before or during the photon-echo sequence. When the scrambler wavelength λ_scr is scanned, one observes strong reduction of the echo signal whenever λ_scr coincides with the resonance transition of any neighboring ions, regardless of same or different species.

© 1995 IEEE