The radiative lifetime of metastable CO ($a^3\Pi ,v=0$)

Abstract

We present a combined experimental and theoretical study on the radiative lifetime of CO in the $a^3{\Pi }_{1,2},v=0$ state. CO molecules in a beam are prepared in selected rotational levels of this metastable state, Stark-decelerated and electrostatically trapped. From the phosphorescence decay in the trap, the radiative lifetime is measured to be $2.63\pm 0.03$ ms for the $a^3{\Pi }_1,v=0,J=1$ level. From spin-orbit coupling between the $a^3\Pi$ and the $A^1\Pi$ state a 20% longer radiative lifetime of 3.16 ms is calculated for this level. It is concluded that coupling to other ${}^1\Pi$ states contributes to the observed phosphorescence rate of metastable CO.

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References in corpus (1)

• Optical pumping of trapped neutral molecules by blackbody radiation

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