Mechanism for the production of vibrationally excited ultracold molecules of Li-7(2)

A scheme is described by which translationally cold molecules can be created in specific rotational and vibrational levels and it is suggested they be employed to test Wigner's threshold laws for inelastic collisions. Calculations are presented of the spontaneous emission probabilities and the absorption oscillator strengths of transitions between the vibrational energy levels of the ground and excited triplet states of the molecules Li-7(2). The fractions of transitions into the continuum and Into the discrete levels are estimated and it is shown that the translationally cold molecules can be produced efficiently in photoassociation experiments. The photoabsorption rate coefficients are computed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.