Time-resolved optical absorption measurements of calcium fluoride crystals

Abstract

This paper examines time-resolved optical absorption measurements in a CaF2 crystal. It is shown that defects with a concentration of about 1017 cm−3 are introduced into the sample within about 10−8 s. The decay curves of defects created by a nanosecond electron pulse in CaF2 were measured in the temperature range from 300 to 700 K. It is found that decay curves are decomposed into three bimolecular decay stages. The totality of the obtained experimental data can be consistently explained within the framework of the assumption of thermal disorder of the fluorite anionic sublattice. The result of electron-hole recombination is the formation of fairly “simple” defect structures in the CaF2 crystal.