Knowledge Bank

The spectrum and lifetime of laser induced emission from NFCl radicals isolated in low temperature argon matrices is reported. The spectrum is compared to emission observed following the photolysis of gas phase $NFCl2$, and the tentative assignment of the gas phase emission to NFCl is $confirmed.1$ The lifetime of the NFCl emission in the matrix is $610\pm 40$ ns. A mechanism involving the ability of different vibrational modes of predissociated electronic states to couple in the low temperature matrix environment is discussed, and used to explain the difference in lifetimes observed for the gas phase and the matrix emission.