New laser measurement techniques for excited electronic states of diatomic molecules

Abstract

Introduction This paper will briefly outline several new laser measurement techniques which we have developed for the analysis of excited elecronic states of diatomic molecules. For molecules which have bound ground states, a visible laser is used to selectively excite a single vibration-rotation level in the electronic state of interest. We then use DC Stark effect, RF double resonance and various fluorescence techniques, as discussed in Sections I and II, to obtain excited state dipole moments, lifetimes, quenching cross sections, transition moments as a function of internuclear distance, and other molecular structure data. We have also developed new laser excitation techniques and used optical double resonance methods for excimer molecules which have repulsive ground states and are bound only in their excited states. These techniques, discussed in Sections III and IV, have been used to obtain potential energy curves, fvalues, lifetimes and various kinetic rates.