Spectral decomposition of phosphorescence decays
In phosphor thermometry, the fitting of decay curves is a key task in the robust and precise determination of temperatures. These decays are generally assumed to be mono-exponential in certain temporal boundaries, where fitting is performed. The present study suggests a multi-exponential method to determine the spectral distribution in terms of decay times in order to analyze phosphorescence decays and thereby complement the mono-exponential analysis. Therefore, two methods of choice are compared and verified using simulated data in the presence of noise. Addtionally, this spectral decomposition is applied to the thermographic phosphor Mg4FGeO6 : Mn and reveals changes in the exponential distributions of decay times upon a change of the excitation laser energy.