Crystal field splittings and luminescence properties for Nd3+, Er3+ and Dy3+ in yttrium orthoaluminate (YAlO3)

This report contains information appropriate for a theoretical analysis of the optical spectra of triply ionized lanthanides in YAlO₃. Starting with the best-fit crystal field parameters, the crystal field splitting schemes, multiplet-to-multiplet line strengths, radiative lifetimes, branching ratios, line-to-line square matrix elements and g-factors for the triply ionized Nd, Er and Dy in YAlO₃ have been calculated. In this paper detailed discussions were made on the luminescence properties of the principal transitions of Nd-doped YAlO₃ emanating from the metastable ⁴F_{$\text{3}\text{2}$} state to Stark components of multiplets of the ground ⁴I_J term and compared to similar results of Y₃Al₅O₁₂ (YAG). The line-to-line branching ratios were calculated including J-mixing effects. In the calculations, only electric dipole transitions were considered because of odd-parity. The results predicted some interesting differences in the optical behavior of Nd³⁺ in these two host materials. It has been observed that there is a reasonable agreement between the theoretical data and those reported experimentally for YAlO₃ and YAG. The theoretical studies undertaken here were chosen to supplement or extend the optical data for these two host materials.