Behavior of electron-spin echoes and photon echoes in high fields

Abstract

The amplitude of the electron-spin or photon echo from an ensemble of isolated atoms (echo atoms) interacting with magnetic-nuclear neighbors is calculated as a function of the magnitude and the orientation of an applied magnetic field H and the separation between the two excitation pulses, in the limit that the magnitude of H is large compared to the effective local fields at the echo-atom sites due to the nuclear neighbors. The general problem is reduced to the equivalent problem of two-level echo atoms interacting with nuclear neighbors. The latter problem is readily solved and applied to both spin and photon echoes. Experimentally observed spin-echo behavior in ruby is compared to calculated spin-echo behavior using no adjustable parameters, and is found to be in good agreement even when the magnetic field is tilted away from the optic axis thereby causing the echoes to disappear. Calculated photon-echo behavior, in which it is assumed that the interaction constants in the excited state are simply related to those in the ground state, shows the same general features as those that have been observed in experiment. Several results are presented to show the wide range of photon-echo behavior for different values of the interaction constants. A simple theory is presented which explains most observed echo behavior in a straightforward way.