Re: paired or unpaired when electron jumps to higher orbital?

George J Bugh wrote:
> If a paired electron is excited to jump to an orbital that is a higher
> energy state and then fails down to a metastable state, then during either
> of these states that are different from its original ground state, will its
> spin still be completely compensated or will it be at least partially
> susceptible to an external stimulus to allow electron spin resonance related
> absorption and radiation? If it becomes partially uncompensated so as to be
> susceptible to EPR techniques then how uncompensated does it become?


For you to measure susceptibility the meta-stable state would need be a 
doublet or triplet state; though accidental alignment of two single 
state from first perturbation principle would work too. Assuming the 
doublet state, the energy gap will go as 2uH and the portionality factor 
will be dependant on the crystal. Now, assuming the triplet state the 
energy difference between the two lowest states will go as

uH + (uH)^2 or uH-(uH)^2. I just forget which way the Sz=0 state go. But 
if you look in the Handbook of Physics there is a very nice chapter that 
outlines magnetic susceptibility and the references given should be a 
good starting point for your research.