Adiabatic refocusing of nuclear spins in Tm3+:YAG

We show that the optical absorbance detection of nuclear spin echo gives direct access to the spin concentration, unlike most coherent signal detection techniques where the signal intensity/amplitude is difficult to connect experimentally with the spin concentration. This way we measure the spin refocusing efficiency in a crystal of Tm$^{3+}$:YAG. Given the large inhomogeneous broadening of the spin transition in this material, rephasing the spins with the usual hard pulse procedure would require excessively high radiofrequency power. Instead we resort to an adiabatic pulse sequence that perfectly returns the spins to their initial common orientation, at low power cost.