Dephasing and diffusional linewidths in spectra of doped amorphous solids: Comparison of photon echo and single molecule spectroscopy data for terrylene in polyethylene Original Research Article

The concept of “homogeneous” spectral linewidths in doped amorphous solids and some possibilities to separate the linewidth parts related to the optical dephasing and spectral diffusion (SD) are discussed. The results of the model calculations of the photon echo (PE) decay under conditions of a large dispersion of homogeneous linewidths are presented. The deviations of the PE decay from an exponential due to this dispersion are discussed. The experimental data on incoherent PE in the terrylene/polyethylene system are presented and compared with literature single molecule spectroscopy (SMS) data. It is shown that in this case the dephasing time dispersion plays an important role for the linewidth distribution in SMS. A simple method for separation of the dephasing and SD linewidths in the SMS, based on intensity saturation effects, is considered. The facilities of this method using some SMS data are demonstrated.