Study of the paraelectric behavior of OH? ions in alkali halides with optical and caloric methods II.: Dynamics of the dipole alignment

The relaxation behavior of OH^? dipole centers in ten alkali halides was studied with electro-optical and electro-caloric methods as a function of applied field, temperature and host lattice system. The reorientation kinetics of the 〈100〉 oriented OH^? dipoles can be fitted successfully to a phonon-assisted (90°) orientational tunneling model. Below 5°K the observed time dependence of the optical dichroism and the T^?1 dependence of the relaxation time gives clear evidence for the predominance of one-phonon processes, while above 5°K the T^?4 dependence indicates multi-phonon processes. It could be demonstrated that in the one-phonon region of the dipole relaxation a population inversion among the dipole levels (with subsequent phonon emission) can be achieved after a fast reversal of the field polarity. An attempt is made to discuss the observed strong variation of the relaxation time (12 orders of magnitude) with the host lattice in terms of a tunneling matrix element renormalized due to the anisotropic lattice distortion around the defect.