Two-phonon resonant Raman scattering at the indirect exciton in silver chloride

Resonant Raman scattering in AgCl is reported for the first time. With excitation in the indirect absorption edge at 1.8K the observed scattering processes involve pairs of momentum-conserving TA(L) and LA(L) phonons with energies of 8.2 meV and 12.9 meV, respectively. The dependence of the scattered intensity on excitation energy suggests that, in contrast to AgBr, intravalley scattering by long wavelength acoustic phonons and intervalley scattering are negligibly small, the main relaxation mechanism of the free exciton being self-trapping. Some enhancement in the 2LO scattering intensity observed is probably due to resonance with the lowest direct exciton.