ABSTRACT
In this article, the development and application of Judd-Ofelt spectral theory(J-O theory) was reviewed briefly. J-O theory was used to analyze the absorption and emission spectra of rare earth ions in solids, and compute their transition probabilities, line strengths, energy lifetimes, emission cross sections, and so on. When J-mixing was considered in J-O theory, the theoretical and experimental results were more consistent. The spectra of Pr3+ can be analyzed relatively accurately with modified J-O theory. The spectral properties of anisotropic crystal can be analyzed from the unpolarized-light transmission spectrum of a quadratic sample without special-orientation processing. The overlapped absorption bands can be treated as one band approximatively. The J-O parameters can also be calculated with fluorescence lifetimes.
