Experimental and calculated energy levels of Sm2+:BaClF

New investigations on the optical properties of divalent samarium in barium chlorofluoride single crystals have been performed. As a result, an energy level diagram including 42 Stark components of the 7FJ and 5DJ multiplets of the 4f6 configuration has been deduced from the excitation and fluorescence spectra. Parameter optimizations involving combined spin–orbit and crystal-field interactions have been achieved from the experimental Stark levels of the 7F ground term. An interpretation of the fitted crystal-field parameters has been developed in the framework of an additive ligand-field model. The irreducible tensor method applied to the chain O3⊆C∞v⊆C4v⊆C2v is used throughout this paper.