Abstract

The absorption spectra of impurities in liquids, glasses, and crystals are often inhomogeneously broadened. This means that different impurities reside in different environments, which are static on the relevant time scale, and which perturb the energy levels of the impurities to produce a distribution of transition energies. This inhomogeneous broadening overwhelms the intrinsic linewidth of an individual impurity (the homogeneous linewidth), and is therefore a complicating feature of high-resolution spectroscopy. On the other hand, from a technological perspective inhomogeneous broadening is interesting because it is necessary for hole-burning, and hence for optical storage. And from a scientific perspective it is also interesting since it provides a probe of the local disorder in complicated condensed phase systems. In this talk I will discuss a molecular theory of inhomogeneous broadening in an attempt to understand this effect within a microscopic statistical mechanics framework.

© 1991 Optical Society of America