Abstract
The methods currently used for studying the defect structure of laser host crystals doped with transition metal or rare-earth ions have several drawbacks or limitations. This study proposes an alternative approach for obtaining optimized impurity structures using molecular dynamics calculation in conjunction with the superposition model. This new approach is specifically applied to a system named α-Al2O3:Yb3+, in which the simulated defect structure is used to fit the superposition model parameters directly onto the observed energy levels. Such an approach provides predicted values of crystal-field parameters, Zeeman splitting g-factor, and hyperfine structure constants. Moreover, the C3v site symmetry is found to be a good approximation for the actual C3 site of Yb3+, as doped in an α-Al2O3 crystal.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support from the Hong Kong Institute of Education is gratefully acknowledged. This work was supported by the Doctoral Scientific Fund Project of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 20115134120004).
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Xie, LH., Yeung, YY. Study of the Defect Structure and Crystal-Field Parameters of α-Al2O3:Yb3+ . Appl Magn Reson 44, 917–925 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00723-013-0452-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00723-013-0452-z