Abstract

It was shown¹ that the electronic luminescence and photoionization of the excited F (F ) centers in KCl reduces drastically with increasing amounts of ⁻OH molecular defects, suggesting a strong coupling between F^* centers and ⁻OH defects. Previously, the rate of the fluorescence quenching due to the coupling could not be determined due to the instrumental resolution. The main purpose of this work is to measure the rate of the quenching using picosecond techniques to determine the type of the electronic coupling (i.e., mutipolar vs electron exchange) as well as the phonon assistance in the process. Our results are obtained from the ground state bleach recovery kinetic studies of the F-centers as a function of ⁻OH concentration and temperature using a picosecond streak camera absorption spectrometer.²

© 1986 Optical Society of America