The narrowness of the optical transitions of rare-earth-ion dopants makes them highly sensitive probes of their environment. We measured the optical transitions Er3+ dopants to determine the previously unknown magnetic ordering of Gd2SiO5 -- a promising host for quantum applications of rare-earth dopants. By measuring the transitions' magnetic-field dependence we determined an antiferromagnetic ordering with spins oriented along or slightly canted from the crystal's a∗ axis. The optical transitions are narrower than the coupling to gadolinium spins revealing information about the coupling strengths. We further optically measured a N\'eel temperature of 1.86±0.01stat.±0.07syst. K, and assembled a phase diagram in applied field and temperature showcasing a triple point where two gadolinium sites order semi-independently from each other. At high applied field the erbium dopants show long optical coherence times up to 0.4 ms at 3 T; at low fields these are probably limited by three low-frequency magnon modes below 10 GHz, observed directly. This study can be used to benchmark a method of magnetic structure determination.
@article{arxiv.2603.12603,
title = {Elucidating magnetic structure with optical dopants: erbium-doped Gd$_2$SiO$_5$},
author = {Luke S. Trainor and Masaya Hiraishi and J. -R. Soh and Jevon J. Longdell},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.12603},
year = {2026}
}