Rydberg and Doubly Excited States of Na₂ and Li₂

Abstract

Rydberg and doubly excited states of Na2 and Li2 have been studied by optical‐optical double resonance (OODR) excitation spectroscopy. In this short review article we summarize the Rydberg states and doubly excited valence states of Li2 and Na2 that have been observed experimentally. We also give experimental evidence for the electronic characteristic differences between these two types of electronic states observed in our experiments.

Experimental study of the Na2 31Πg state

“…Experimentally, much more accurate spectra of sodium dimers have been studied after the advent of lasers. By comparing the experimental observations with the theoretical calculations, some ambiguous assignments of the excited electronic states in the early reports were relabelled and classified by Li et al [2,3]. They relabelled the Rydberg states according to the dominated hydrogenic nlk characters of the Rydberg orbital and classified the Rydberg states as core-penetrating versus core-nonpenetrating states.…”