Study of the point defect creation and of the excitonic luminescence in alkali halides irradiated by swift heavy ions

The aim of this experimental thesis is to study the excitonic mechanisms and of the defect creation, in NaCl and KBr, under dense electronic excitations induced by swift heavy ion irradiations. In the first part, we present the main features of the interaction of swift heavy ions with solid targets, and after we review the well known radiolytic processes of the defect creation during X-ray irradiation. In the second chapter, we describe our experimental set-up. In the chapter III, we present our results of the in-situ optical absorption measurements. This results show that defect creation is less sensitive to the temperature than during a classical irradiation. Besides, we observe new mechanisms concerning the defect aggregation. In the chapter IV, we present the results of excitonic luminescence induced by swift by swift heavy ions. We observe that the luminescence yields only change with the highest electronic stopping power. In the chapter V, we perform thermal spike and luminescence yields calculations and we compare the numerical results to the experiments presented in the chapter IV. (author). 121 refs., 65 figs., 30 tabs