title: Optical pumping and readout of bismuth hyperfine states in silicon for atomic clock applications.
abstract: The push for a semiconductor-based quantum information technology has renewed interest in the spin states and optical transitions of shallow donors in silicon, including the donor bound exciton transitions in the near-infrared and the Rydberg, or hydrogenic, transitions in the mid-infrared. The deepest group V donor in silicon, bismuth, has a large zero-field ground state hyperfine splitting, comparable to that of rubidium, upon which the now-ubiquitous rubidium atomic clock time standard is based. Here we show that the ground state hyperfine populations of bismuth can be read out using the mid-infrared Rydberg transitions, analogous to the optical readout of the rubidium ground state populations upon which rubidium clock technology is based. We further use these transitions to demonstrate strong population pumping by resonant excitation of the bound exciton transitions, suggesting several possible approaches to a solid-state atomic clock using bismuth in silicon, or eventually in enriched (28)Si.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saeedi
authors.affiliation: Walter Schottky Institute, Technische Universität München, Am Coulombwall 4, 85748 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Szech
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dluhy
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: J Z
authors.initials: JZ
authors.lastname: Salvail
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Morse
authors.affiliation: Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Riemann
authors.affiliation: Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: N V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Abrosimov
authors.affiliation: Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nötzel
authors.affiliation: Advanced Technology Institute and SEPNet, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK.
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Litvinenko
authors.affiliation: Advanced Technology Institute and SEPNet, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK.
authors.forename: B N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Murdin
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: M L W
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Thewalt