Kinetics of metastable excited state products in a beam–gas chemiluminescent reaction

Abstract

The kinetics of a beam–gas chemiluminescent experiment are investigated. The first observations of collision induced emission from within an excited molecular electronic state are presented. The importance of a ’’loss mechanism’’ whereby metastable molecules are deactivated in wall collision is discussed. Comparisons with beam–beam chemiluminescent experiments are presented and the role of the excited state radiative lifetime is demonstrated.