Direct Measurement of the Radiative Lifetime of Vibrationally Excited OH Radicals

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 ²Π_3/2, v=1, J=3/2 level is determined as 59.0±2.0  ms, in good agreement with the calculated value of 58.0±1.0  ms.