  The band gap energy as well as the possibility of cross luminescence
processes in alkaline-earth dihalide crystals have been calculated using the ab
initio Perturbed-Ion (PI) model. The gap is calculated in several ways: as a
difference between one-electron energy eigenvalues and as a difference between
total energies of appropriate electronic states of the crystal, both at the HF
level and with inclusion of Coulomb correlation effects. In order to study the
possibility of ocurrence of cross luminescence in these materials, the energy
difference between the valence band and the upmost core band for some
representative crystals has been calculated. Both calculated band gap energies
and cross luminescence predictions compare very well with the available
experimental results.
