Emission spectrum of bismuth monochloride

Bismuth chloride has been excited in flowing condition with an uncondensed transformer discharge. About 390 bands are observed in the present experiments of which only 140 were recorded by earlier workers. The vibrational constants obtained are the same as those obtained by Morgan from obsorption experiments except for the addition of a cubic term for the upper state. It appears quite likely that the upper state of the system dissociates into Bi (⁴S_3/2) + Cl (²P_1/2) while the lower state, which is probably the ground state, dissociates into Bi (⁴S_3/2) + Cl (²P_3/2). The rough values of the dissociation energies obtained by extrapolations are D₀′=3750 cm.^?1 and D₀″=24614 cm.^?1