Abstract

This paper presents the first results on a correlation between the luminescence of excitons self-trapped at the surface of solid argon and desorption. Recently, Jennison and Emin showed that localisation of electronic excitation at the surface of the crystal is an essential condition, and that especially self-trapping of excitons can lead to desorption of neutral atoms¹. In the case of solid argon, self-trapping of excitons at the surface has been proved to exist². It leads to characteristic luninescence bands which were also measured with electron excitation techniques³. Two of them exactly coincide with the ³P₁ and ¹P₁ emission of isolated argon atoms and were not understood up to now. In the course of this work it turned out that they are emitted by desorbing neutral atoms.

© 1984 Optical Society of America