Metastable Quasimolecules in Excited Gases

Quasimolecules, which consist of two differently excited atoms in a resonantly excited gas, are considered. The energy of dissociation and typical sizes of such molecules are calculated in the first order of quantum-mechanical perturbation theory with the help of the dipole-dipole interaction operator. It is shown that there exist metastable quasimolecules, whose dipole radiative transition to the ground state (two non-excited atoms) is forbidden. The lifetime of such molecules is estimated and it is shown that quasimolecules may considerably affect the transport processes in a resonantly excited gas.