Research

Project 1: Measuring the radiative lifetime of highly excited states of sodium molecules

Ground state sodium molecules in a mild supersonic molecular beam are excited to populate the selected ro-vibrational levels in the 41Sg+ state using double resonance excitation via the intermediate A1Su+ state. Then, the excited molecules are ionized from a delayed Nd:YAG laser and the generated ions are detected in a linear time-of-flight mass spectrometer. By changing the probe laser delay, lifetimes are extracted for individual ro-vibrational levels. Here is a schematic diagram of the full experimental setup and the excitation scheme.