Ttitle: Rovibrationally Resolved Lifetime Measurement of Molecular Sodium

Abstract: I will be presenting my group’s recent work on experimental studies of radiative lifetimes of sodium molecules using time-resolved optical-optical double-resonance spectroscopy. Sodium molecules can exhibit exotic behavior since their structural and radiative properties vary strongly as a function of internuclear distance due to the effect of the ion pair character, which causes the formation of a double well in the molecular electronic states. Such behavior makes the lifetime of the higher lying electronic states of the sigma symmetry more interesting due to rapid change in the transition dipole moment. In our experiment we used the X^1Sigma_g (0,31) —>   A^1Sigma_u (7,30) —>  6^1Sigma_g (0,31) transition to measure the radiative properties of the 6^1Sigma_g (0,31) sodium dimer. The measurement is done using a time-resolved photon counting technique. Recently, the radiative lifetimes of some of the ion-pair states of sodium molecules have been calculated. I will end my talk by comparing our recent result with the theoretical calculation. This work is supported by National Science Foundation.