The ground electronic state of KCs studied by Fourier transform spectroscopy

We present here the first analysis of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) of the KCs molecule obtaining highly accurate data and perform a direct potential construction for the X (1)Sigma(+) ground state in a wide range of internuclear distances. KCs molecules were produced by heating a mixture of K and Cs metals in a heat pipe at a temperature of about 270 degrees C. KCs fluorescence was induced by different laser sources: the 454.5, 457.9, 465.8, and 472.7 nm lines of an Ar(+) laser, a dye laser with Rhodamine 6G dye (excitation at around 16 870 cm(-1)), and 850 and 980 nm diode lasers (11 500-11 900 and 10 200-10 450 cm(-1) tuning ranges, respectively). The LIF to the ground state was recorded by a Bruker IFS-125HR Fourier transform spectrometer with a spectral resolution of 0.03 cm(-1). Particularly, by applying the 850 nm laser diode we were able to observe LIF progressions to very high vibrational levels of the ground state close to the dissociation limit. The present data field contains 7226 term values for the ground state X (1)Sigma(+) and covers a range from v ''=0 to 97 with J '' varying from 12 to 209. More than 10 000 fluorescence lines were used to fit the ground state potential energy curve via the inverted perturbation approach procedure. The present empirical potential extends up to approximately 12.6 angstrom and covers more than 99% of the potential well depth, it describes most of the spectral lines with an accuracy of about 0.003 cm(-1) and yields a dissociation energy of 4069.3 +/- 1.5 cm(-1) for the ground state X (1)Sigma(+). First observations of the triplet ground state a (3)Sigma(+) of KCs are presented, and preliminary values of few main molecular constants could be derived. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.