Use of hydrostatic pressure to resolve phonon replicalike features in the photoluminescence spectrum of beryllium-doped silicon

Photoluminescence (PL) from the recombination of isoelectronic bound excitons in beryllium-doped bulk silicon is measured at 9 K. Pressure tuning demonstrates that two of the PL peaks, which are in the spectral region of phonon replicas previously associated with the recombination of excitons bound to Be pairs, are certainly not phonon replicas of the zero-phonon peak, and likely correspond to the recombination of excitons bound to other Be complexes. This study illustrates the value of applying pressure to a material to elucidate its properties at ambient pressure.