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Direct measurement of the radiative lifetime of vibrationally excited OH radicals

Sebastiaan Y. T. van de Meerakker, Nicolas Vanhaecke, Mark P. J. van der Loo, Gerrit C. Groenenboom, Gerard Meijer

physics.chem-pharXiv:physics/0505097

Abstract

Neutral molecules, isolated in the gas-phase, can be prepared in a long-lived excited state and stored in a trap. The long observation time afforded by the trap can then be exploited to measure the radiative lifetime of this state by monitoring the temporal decay of the population in the trap. This method is demonstrated here and used to benchmark the Einstein A-coefficients in the Meinel system of OH. A pulsed beam of vibrationally excited OH radicals is Stark decelerated and loaded into an electrostatic quadrupole trap. The radiative lifetime of the upper Λ-doublet component of the X 2Π3/2, v=1, J=3/2 level is determined as 59.0 2.0 ms, in good agreement with the calculated value of 57.7 1.0 ms.

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