Room Temperature Continuous-Wave Inorganic Maser

室温连续波无机微波激射器

• 批准号: EP/S000798/2
• 负责人: Jonathan Breeze
• 金额: $ 32.8万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FS000798%2F2
• 关键词: Room; Temperature; Continuous; Wave; Inorganic

Until very recently the MASER could only be used in very specialist applications such as radio astronomy. The reason for this is that cryogenic cooling and to a lesser extent, high applied magnetic fields, prohibited mass production on the grounds of both complexity and cost. Despite the fact that the MASER was discovered before the LASER these issues meant that the latter, which does not need applied magnetic fields or cooling, saw widespread adoption in a huge range of applications from bar-code readers, laser discs to laser eye surgery.In 2013 Imperial and UCL were awarded an EPSRC funded research project to produce a room temperature MASER. Although we had preliminary observations that room temperature masing was possible we had not verified this in a different laboratory setting, nor did we have a clear idea of how the masing molecule interacted with light and which crystal orientations or dopant concentrations would be optimal. This collaboration was remarkably successful achieving all the objectives we set.Now, in what is another world first, the team has constructed a diamond MASER capable of continuous-wave operation at room temperature. Our previous research has concentrated solely on organic materials as the masing medium. In this proposal we will explore the potential of masing in inorganic materials at room temperature. In doing so we will obviate two key problems encountered with organics.Problem 1 - Decay rates: The primary obstacle that prevents continuous operation in organics is the relatively long lifetime of the lowest triplet sub-level, reducing the number of pentacenes available for optical pumping (bottleneck) and destroying the population inversion.Problem 2 - Heating: The organic gain medium, pentacene in p-terphenyl we first used to demonstrate a room temperature MASER cannot withstand a continuous illumination by a laser because the temperature of the terphenyl host rises above its melting point. Solution to both problems: a radical but exciting departure which will address both problems simultaneously is to explore high spin states in inorganic materials with high melting/decomposition temperature and favourable thermal conductivities (T.C.): such as diamond (M.P. 3550C; T.C. 2000 W/mK) and silicon carbide (2730C; T.C. 120 W/mK).Very recently we observed masing at room temperature in diamond exploiting NV centres. This means we can build upon a huge wealth of research in the UK and elsewhere on diamond NV centres. Again there is much research exploring defects in SiC that we can build on. We have initiated a collaboration with the group of Prof. Dr. Vladimir Dyakonov at Würzburg group who are currently exploring SiC. REF. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00052.pdf Achieving this would further establish without doubt the UK as the key place to carry out fundamental research on the topic of room temperature MASERs.

直到最近，微波激射器还只能用于非常专业的应用，如射电天文学。其原因是，低温冷却和在较小程度上，高施加的磁场，以复杂性和成本为由禁止大规模生产。尽管MASER早于LASER被发现，但这些问题意味着LASER不需要外加磁场或冷却，在从条形码阅读器，激光光盘到激光眼科手术的广泛应用中得到了广泛采用。2013年，帝国理工学院和伦敦大学学院获得了EPSRC资助的研究项目，以生产室温MASER。虽然我们有初步的观察，室温下的微波激射是可能的，但我们没有在不同的实验室环境中验证这一点，我们也没有一个明确的想法，微波激射分子如何与光相互作用，以及哪些晶体取向或掺杂剂浓度是最佳的。这次合作非常成功地实现了我们设定的所有目标。现在，该团队又一次创造了世界第一，建造了一个能够在室温下连续波运行的钻石脉泽。我们以前的研究只集中在有机材料作为激射介质。在这个提议中，我们将探索室温下无机材料中激射的潜力。问题1 -衰变率：阻止有机物中连续操作的主要障碍是最低三重态子能级的相对较长的寿命，减少了可用于光泵浦的并五苯的数量问题2 -加热：有机增益介质，在对三联苯中的并五苯，我们首先用来证明室温MASER不能承受激光的连续照射，因为三联苯主体的温度上升到其熔点以上。 这两个问题的解决方案：同时解决这两个问题的一个激进但令人兴奋的出发点是探索具有高熔融/分解温度和有利热导率（T.C.）的无机材料中的高自旋态：例如金刚石（M.P.3550C; T.C. 2000 W/mK）和碳化硅（2730 C; T.C.最近，我们在室温下观察到利用NV中心的金刚石中的激射。这意味着我们可以在英国和其他地方对钻石NV中心进行大量研究。同样，我们可以在SiC缺陷方面进行大量研究。我们已经开始与维尔茨堡集团的弗拉基米尔·迪亚科诺夫教授和博士团队合作，他们目前正在探索SiC。https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00052.pdf实现这一目标无疑将进一步确立英国作为开展室温MASER主题基础研究的关键地点。

项目成果

Near-Surface ^{125}Te^{+} Spins with Millisecond Coherence Lifetime.

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.129.117701
• 发表时间: 2022-09
• 期刊: Physical review letters
• 影响因子: 8.6
• 作者: M. Šimėnas;James O'Sullivan;O. Kennedy;Sen Lin;S. Fearn;C. Zollitsch;Gavin Dold;T. Schmitt;P. Schüffelgen;Renbao Liu;J. Morton

Probing spin dynamics of ultra-thin van der Waals magnets via photon-magnon coupling.

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38322-x
• 发表时间: 2023-05-05
• 期刊: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
• 影响因子: 16.6
• 作者: Zollitsch, Christoph W.;Khan, Safe;Nam, Vu Thanh Trung;Verzhbitskiy, Ivan A.;Sagkovits, Dimitrios;O'Sullivan, James;Kennedy, Oscar W.;Strungaru, Mara;Santos, Elton J. G.;Morton, John J. L.;Eda, Goki;Kurebayashi, Hidekazu
• 通讯作者: Kurebayashi, Hidekazu

Maser threshold characterization by resonator Q-factor tuning

通过谐振器 Q 因子调谐来表征脉泽阈值

• DOI: 10.1038/s42005-023-01418-3
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Communications Physics
• 影响因子: 5.5
• 作者: Zollitsch C