Temperature dependence of dephasing of impurities in amorphous hosts

The temperature dependence of the optical linewidth of an impurity imbedded in a glassy matrix is investigated. The model hamiltonian couples the impurity to two-level systems (TLSs) characteristic for the glassy state and the TLSs to the acoustic phonons of the matrix. It is shown that the linewidth depends strongly on the parameters describing the TLSs and that it shows a linear temperature dependence also well below the Debye temperature. © 1982.