Optical read-out and manipulation of the nuclear spin state of single rare-earth ions doped in a crystal enable the large-scale storage and the transport of quantum information. Here, we report the photo-luminescence excitation spectroscopy results of single Pr3+ ions in a bulk crystal of LaF3 at 1.5 K. In a bulk sample, the signal from a single ion at the focus is often hidden under the background signal originating from numerous out-of-focus ions in the entire sample. To combine with a homemade cryogenic confocal microscope, we developed a reflecting objective that works in superfluid helium with a numerical aperture of 0.99, which increases the signal by increasing the solid angle of collection to 1.16π and reduces the background by decreasing the focal volume. The photo-luminescence excitation spectrum of single Pr3+ was measured at a wing of the spectral line of the 3H4 right arrow 3P0 transition at 627.33 THz (477.89 nm). The spectrum of individual Pr3+ ions appears on top of the background of 60 cps as isolated peaks with intensities of 20–30 cps and full-width at half-maximum widths of approximately 3 MHz at an excitation intensity of 80 W cm−2.
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