Abstract

A nitrogen-seeded supersonic nozzle-beam source of metastable mercury, Hg(6 3P0),isdescribed.Ground-state(6 1S0)mercuryisexcited with 2537 Å resonance radiation to the 6 3P1 state, which is then converted via intramultiplet quenching to the 6 3P0 state collision with nitrogen (the carrier gas). The mercury beam is accelerated by the N2 seeding gas to a speed of 8×104 cm sec−1. Thus, the present source provides a beam of a single metastable state, Hg(6 3P0), with 4.67 eV of electronic excitation and 0.67 eV of translational energy. The metastable beam has been characterized and the kinetics of the over-all photoexcitation and quenching process studied by a secondary electron (Auger) detector utilizing a potassium surface, and an electron-bombardment ionizer, mass-filter detector. Hg(6 3P0) beam intensities of 4×1012 atoms sr−1⋅sec−1 are obtained, based upon an (assumed) 5% efficiency for the Auger detector.

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