Line Shapes in Infrared Absorption by Solids and by Atomic or Molecular Species Embedded in Solids

Abstract

When the target is in the solid state, most infrared spectral features are manifestly asymmetric; hence, a line shape function well-grounded in theory is necessary to ascertain the net energy taken by the associated electronic transition. The main sources for spectral line broadening, asymmetry, and shift, no matter the transferred energy, are multiphonon events involving the acoustic vibrational modes. A simple closed-form mathematical expression for the phonon-broadened lineshapes, shown to be valid at low temperatures, and linewidths on the order of the Debye energy of the solid or smaller, giving remarkable agreement with experiment is studied in connection with its utility for analyzing infrared spectral features.