Radiative and Nonradiative Transitions in the Fluorescence Decay of Eu3+ in SrTiO3

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Abstract
The fluorescence excitation and decay properties of Eu3+ in SrTiO3 have been studied using steady‐state and pulse techniques. The transient fluorescence response following pulsed selective excitation was used to establish the modes of energy decay. The probabilities for spontaneous magnetic‐dipole emission were calculated for several states. These results combined with relative fluorescence intensity measurements are compared with the observed fluorescence lifetimes to determine the probabilities for radiative and nonradiative decay. Whereas the decay of the 5D0 state is radiative, consisting of both zero‐phonon and phonon‐assisted transitions, the 5D1 decay is composed of radiative transitions to states of 7F and nonradiative transitions to 5D0, the latter being dominant. The 5D0 and 5D1 fluorescence lifetimes exhibit different temperature dependences which are discussed in terms of the contributions from phonon‐assisted and multiphonon nonradiative transitions. The change in the 5D0 lifetime as the temperature is varied through the 110°K phase transition of SrTiO3 is ≲ 10%.