Optics and Spectroscopy
Low-temperature photon echo study of 2-MTHF glass under high pressure
Michael McIntire, E. L. Chronister
Abstract
A high-pressure photon echo study of the low-temperature dynamics of rhodamine 640 in a 2-methyltetrahydrofuran (2-MTHF) molecular glass is reported. High pressure is found to decrease the homogeneous dephasing rate comparably to the volume compression ratio. The pressured-induced line narrowing is also qualitatively similar to high-pressure hole burning results reported for a 2-MTHF glass doped with bacteriochlorophyll a . The results are consistent with a pressure-induced decrease in the number of tunneling two-level systems (TLSs) that may be associated with collapsible void space in the molecular glass. Comparable high-pressure photon echo studies of organic polymer glasses over the same low-temperature range do not show line narrowing at high pressure, suggesting an intrinsic difference in the nature of TLSs for molecular versus polymer glasses.