Abstract

So far, persistent spectral hole-burning (PSHB) phenomenon has been observed in a number of materials. They are molecules in glasses, crystals and polymers, color centers in alkali halide crystals, and rare earth and transition metal ions in glasses and crystals. They are molecular or ionic guests embedded in glass, crystal or polymer hosts. Basic requirements for the PSHB are summarized as follows: (1) The optical absorption of guests embedded in hosts must be broadened inhomogeneously. (2) There must exist more than one ground state configurations of the total system consisting of guests and hosts. (3) The relaxation among the ground states must be slower than the decay rate of any excited state. In fact, this set of requirements is satisfied in many kinds of molecular or ionic guests in hosts, such as glasses, crystals and polymers, at low temperatures. We can naturally understand that guests consisting of small number of atoms are greatly influenced by the surrounding hosts and that the energy levels of the guests are inhomogeneously broadened.

© 1994 Optical Society of America