American Physical Society, Physical Review A, 4(88), 2013
DOI: 10.1103/physreva.88.042701
Full text: Unavailable
Collinear laser spectroscopy was performed on an atomic beam of stable ^{55}Mn. An ion beam of ^{55}Mn^{+} was generated in an ion source, accelerated to 15 keV, and neutralized via charge-exchange reactions with a Na vapor. A long-lived metastable state of Mn i, near-resonantly populated in the charge-exchange process, was investigated via laser probing in addition to a laser excitation from the ground state in Mn i. The relative population of the Mn i metastable state compared to that of the ground state was found to be 0.7±0.3. A theoretical calculation, which included feeding to the ground state and the metastable state from higher-energy excited electronic states populated in the charge-exchange process, agreed with the present result. The deduced A and B hyperfine coupling constants agreed with literature values, where available.