Lifetime measurements of perturbed triplet states of the CO molecule

The lifetimes of individual rotational vibrational levels of the perturbed a'3Sigma(+) (v = 14) and the e3Sigma(-) (v = 5) state of the CO molecule were measured under collision-free conditions using state selective excitation. By pumping individual levels of the triplet states with different total angular momenta, widely different lifetimes have been measured with an accuracy of 3-5 percent. It is shown that lifetime measurements provide a more sensitive measure of the mixing coefficients /B/-squared than energy level perturbations. 9 references