Visible to vacuum-UV range optical absorption of oxygen dangling bonds in amorphous SiO{sub 2}

Synthetic silica glass with an optical absorption spectrum dominated by oxygen dangling bonds (nonbridging oxygen hole centers, or NBOHCs) and having negligible (<1%) contribution from the usually copresent Si dangling bonds (E'-centers), was prepared by room temperature ultraviolet photobleaching of high SiOH content (''wet'') silica, irradiated by F{sub 2} laser (7.9 eV) at T = 80 K. This allowed us to obtain the up-to-now controversial optical absorption spectrum of NBOHC in the ultraviolet and vacuum-ultraviolet (UV-VUV) region of the spectrum and to show that it is semicontinuous from 4 to 7.8 eV and cannot be represented by a pair of distinct Gaussian bands. Since NBOHC is one of the main UV-VUV range optical absorbers in silica, its spectral shape provides a tool to disentangle contributions of different color centers to optical losses in this spectral region.

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