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Updated: Jun 12, 2026

Hyperspectral Imaging as a Tool to Study Optical Anisotropy in Lanthanide-Based Molecular Single Crystals
Published on: April 14, 2020
Hyperfine structure and nuclear hyperpolarization observed in the bound exciton luminescence of Bi donors in natural
T Sekiguchi1, M Steger, K Saeedi
1Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.
Abstract:
As the deepest group-V donor in Si, Bi has by far the largest hyperfine interaction and also a large I = 9/2 nuclear spin. At zero field this splits the donor ground state into states having total spin 5 and 4, which are fully resolved in the photoluminescence spectrum of Bi donor bound excitons. Under a magnetic field, the 60 expected allowed transitions cannot be individually resolved, but the effects of the nuclear spin distribution, -9/2 < or = I(z) < or = 9/2, are clearly observed. A strong hyperpolarization of the nuclear spin towards I(z) = -9/2 is observed to result from the nonresonant optical excitation. This is very similar to the recently reported optical hyperpolarization of P donors observed by EPR at higher magnetic fields. We introduce a new model to explain this effect, and predict that it may be very fast.
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