Absolute luminescence efficiency of ion-bombarded solid argon

Abstract

We have directly measured the absolute efficiency of the 9.8-eV M-band luminescence from the decay of Ar 2 * excimers in solid Ar bombarded by 1.5-MeV He ϩ and 10-50-keV H ϩ ions. About 54% of the electronic energy deposited by the projectiles is converted to 9.8-eV luminescence energy, or about 5.5 photons per 100-eV deposited. The efficiency is also found to be independent of ion and ion energy for those tested over a range of stopping cross sections from 6.5 to 400 eV/(10 15 atoms/cm 2). This work clearly establishes the M band as the major relaxation pathway for electronically deposited energy in solid Ar, a pathway that is an important source of radiation damage and sputtering and which can be affected by electron emission. ͓S0163-1829͑97͒00535-3͔

Sputtering: survey of observations and derived principles

“…The total sputtering yield is proportional to S e , since the number of ionizations and excitations produced by the projectile per unit path length is proportional to S e . The production of excited states by the ion is very efficient; half of the electronic energy deposited by the ions is transformed into the 9.8 eV excimer luminescence (Grosjean et al . 1997).…”

Rayleigh scattering in rare-gas liquids

“…Helium luminesces in a broad band centered about 16 eV, while at the other end of the series, xenon luminesces at 7 eV. Xenon [12] and argon [13] have been measured to convert as much as 55% of the kinetic energy of a primary ionizing particle into UV photons, Helium is somewhat less efficient, but still converts 35% of the energy of a few hundred keV electron into scintillation [14].…”

Transient thermal effects in solid noble gases as materials for the detection of Dark Matter

“…In the modelling, the fact that part of the energy transferred to the electronic system is used for scintillation was also kept into account: in Ar and Xe the data from Refs. [56,57] into scintillation exist, to our knowledge, in the literature for Kr, and an average of 40 % of the ionising energy loss was supposed to contribute to the transient phenomena analysed, independent on the recoil energy. The response of the crystal to the passage of a particle depends both on the characteristics of the material and on the energy loss of the projectile.…”