How Is Metastable State Created?

In a three-level laser, the material is first excited to a short-lived high-energy state that spontaneously drops to a somewhat lower-energy state with an unusually long lifetime, called a metastable state.

How metastable state is formed?

In some of these lasers, helium atoms are excited into metastable states by an electric discharge. In collisions with other atoms (e.g. neon in a helium–neon laser), they can then transfer the excitation energy to those atoms. ... It also occurs that after the laser transition atoms are “stuck” in a metastable state.

What is meant by metastable state?

Metastable state, in physics and chemistry, particular excited state of an atom, nucleus, or other system that has a longer lifetime than the ordinary excited states and that generally has a shorter lifetime than the lowest, often stable, energy state, called the ground state.