Prompt and delayed excitation and photolysis of cesium dimers

In this work a time-delayed, double resonance technique was used for the study of the state selective photolysis of Cs2 excited in the yellow range of visible wavelengths. Particular attention being placed on the production of the fine structure components of the 52D and 62P states of Cs and upon the lifetimes of the product populations in the cesium vapor. A quantitative model was constructed to fit the data and rate coefficients were extracted for processes tending to attenuate the product state selectivity. Reported here is what appears to be the first value for the fine-structure mixing cross section for Cs(52D5/2 → 52D3/sub 3/2/) of 17 A2 +-50%, close to the geometric cross section