Dispersive phonon modes by resonant Raman scattering in AgBr

Dispersive Raman modes are observed in AgBr at low temperatures when the incident laser light is tuned across the indirect Γ-L^′₃ exciton absorption. These modes occur as sidebands of the resonantly enhanced 2 TO(L), TO+LA(L) and 2 LA(L) Raman peaks and are interpreted as being due to three- and four-phonon processes, respectively. They involve longitudinal acoustic phonons near the Brillouin zone center that exhibit strong dispersion. From analysing the spectra the relaxation of the intermediate exciton state can be studied in detail. The model applied enables us to obtain directly the average effective mass of the ls indirect exciton as 1.5 electron masses.