Influence of high pressure on optical impurity spectra.

Expressions are derived for inhomogeneous band shapes of impurity spectra in highly compressed glassy matrices. Intermolecular guest-host interactions are approximated to isotropic two-body Lennard-Jones 6-12 potentials having different parameters in the ground state and the excited state. Calculated shifts and widths are compared to published values for the absorption spectra of phenanthrene, anthracene [B. Y. Okamoto and H. G. Drickamer, J. Chem. Phys. 61, 2870 (1974)], and several polymethine dyes [G. A. Samara et al., J. Chem. Phys. 37, 1482 (1962)] embedded in polymer hosts and subject to pressures up to 140 kbars. The magnitudes of barochromic shifts of the band maxima and the inhomogeneous broadening suggest that the equilibrium coordinates of the excited state are typically less by 5+/-2%.