https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170249
Study of excitation transfer Li(3D → 3P) occurring in optical collisions with rare gas atoms experimentally
Institut für Experimentalphysik, Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf,
40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
Corresponding author: a behmenbu@uni-duesseldorf.de
Received:
23
February
2000
Revised:
5
July
2000
Published online: 15 March 2001
By selective optical excitation of collision pairs and observation of the reemitted fluorescence
information is obtained on the role of the molecular channels involved in inelelastic collisions. As an example case we have studied experimentally the Li(
) excitation transfer in Li(3D)X systems with 
, Ar by means of the optical collision process 
where 
collision molecules dissociate into Li(3P, 3D) atoms following laser excitation 
of 
pairs. For this purpose we measured the Li 3P/3D population ratio by the fluorescence from these levels as function of the laser detuning 
from the Li(2P-3D) transition and the rare gas pressure, and determined from this the 3P/3D excitation ratio 
for single collision conditions. The experiments were performed using two step cw laser excitation of gaseous mixtures 
at temperatures around 600 K in the detuning range 
cm-1. The profiles obtained display strong blue-red wing asymmetries both for 
and 
. This reflects different dissociation probabilities from the 
or 
states that are initially prepared by blue wing or red wing excitation, respectively. The results are qualitatively discussed in terms of new
ab initio potentials for the two systems.
PACS: 32.70.-n – Intensities and shapes of atomic spectral lines / 34.30.+h – Intramolecular energy transfer; intramolecular dynamics; dynamics of van der Waals molecules
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2001
