Luminescent VUV spectroscopy of image and image ions in strontium fluoride crystals

Emission and excitation spectra as well as decay curves of image and image ions doped into image crystals have been studied using time-resolved vacuum-ultraviolet spectroscopy under pulsed synchrotron radiation at 8 K. In emission spectrum for crystals doped with image ions together with well-known emission caused by spin-forbidden image transitions (decay constant in the microsecond range), a new fast emission band detected at 146.5 nm (decay constant is less than 0.6 ns) has been revealed. It was shown that excitation spectra of f–f and d–f emission bands for image and image ions in image have opposite behaviors in the spectral range corresponding to energy of their image configurations. These peculiarities and energy transfer mechanisms were analyzed.