Journal of Physics C Solid State Physics
Diffusion of localized optical excitations and trap emission in ruby
J. Heinrichs, Anil Kumar, Neeraj Kumar
Abstract
Using the critical percolation conductance method the energy-dependent diffusion coefficient associated with thermally assisted transfer of the R 1 line excitation between single Cr 3+ ions with strain-induced randomness has been calculated in the 4 A 2 to E( 2 E) transition energies. For localized states sufficiently far away from the mobility edge the energy transfer is dominated by dipolar interactions, while very close to the mobility edge it is determined by short-range exchange interactions. Using the above energy-dependent diffusion coefficient a macroscopic diffusion equation is solved for the rate of light emission by Cr 3+ ion-pair traps to which single-ion excitations are transferred. The dipolar mechanism leads to good agreement with recent measurements of the pair emission rate by Koo et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol.35, p.1669 (1975)) right up to the mobility edge.