Abstract

We report on an investigation of the nonradiative relaxation of photoexcited Cr³⁺ employing photocaloric spectroscopy. It is shown, that this method supplements fluorescence lifetime and photoacoustic measurements¹⁾ to completely determine the branching into different relaxation channels.

In photocaloric experiments one measures quantitatively that part of the absorbed photon energy that is converted into heat. Precise heat measurements are performed using a caloric compensation scheme. Suitable tests proved that all energy-absorbed from a laser beam is detected to within ±2 %, in the range 5 mW to 200 mW. A higher sensitivity can be achieved with more sophisticated control circuitry.²⁾

© 1984 Optical Society of America