Nonadiabatic coupling in the 3 3 and 4 3 states of NaK

The excited 3 3 and 4 3 electronic states of the NaK molecule exhibit an avoided crossing, leading to the anomalous behavior of many features of the rovibrational energy levels belonging to each state. A joint experimental and theoretical investigation of these states has been carried out. Experimental measurements of the vibrational, rotational, and hyperfine structure of numerous levels of the 3 3 state were recently obtained using the Doppler-free, perturbation-facilitated optical-optical double resonance technique. Additional measurements for the 4 3 state as well as bound-free emission spectra from selected 3 3 , 4 3 , and mixed 3 3 4 3 rovibrational levels are reported here. A model is also presented for calculating the mixed rovibrational level energies of the coupled 3 3 -4 3 system, starting from a 2 2 diabatic electronic Hamiltonian. The 3 3 and 4 3 potential curves and the coupling between them are simultaneously adjusted to fit the observed rovibrational levels of both states. The energy levels of the potential curves determined by the fit are in excellent agreement with experiment. The nonadiabatic coupling is sufficiently strong to cause an overall shift of 2–3 cm−1 for many rovibrational levels as well as somewhat larger shifts for certain pairs of 3 3 4 3 levels that would otherwise be very close together. © 2006 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2348635