Microwave Fluorescence Detection of Spin Echoes
Eric Billaud, Léo Balembois, Marianne Le Dantec, Miloš Rančić, Emanuele Albertinale, Sylvain Bertaina, T. Chanelière, Philippe Goldner, D. Estève, D. Vion, P. Bertet, Emmanuel Flurin
Abstract
Counting the microwave photons emitted by an ensemble of electron spins when they relax radiatively has recently been proposed as a sensitive method for electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, enabled by the development of operational single microwave photon detectors at millikelvin temperature. Here, we report the detection of spin echoes in the spin fluorescence signal. The echo manifests itself as a coherent modulation of the number of photons spontaneously emitted after a $\ensuremath{\pi}/{2}_{X}\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\pi}}_{Y}\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\pi}/{2}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}}$ sequence, dependent on the relative phase $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$. We demonstrate experimentally this detection method using an ensemble of ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ ion spins in a scheelite crystal of ${\mathrm{CaWO}}_{4}$. We use fluorescence-detected echoes to measure the erbium spin coherence time, as well as the echo envelope modulation due to the coupling to the $^{183}\mathrm{W}$ nuclear spins surrounding each ion. We finally compare the signal-to-noise ratio of inductively detected and fluorescence-detected echoes, and show that it is larger with the fluorescence method.