Rovibronic Spectroscopy

Research in this area is vital and fundable for modern science in areas including

Environmental

E.g. Enforcing world-wide climate change agreements may rely on monitoring the isotopic composition of CO₂ in the country’s atmosphere: low abundance or absence of ¹⁴C indicates non-biological origin. Spectroscopic measurement of isotopic abundance is cheaper than traditional techniques, but relies on very detailed understanding from cutting-edge experiment and theory. Other key species include ozone, NOx, SOx and toxic heavy-metal gases.

Industry

Industrial chimneys are extremely complex chemical environments whose composition must be accurately known to minimise pollutants and to optimise the process and thereby reduce its cost. Assisting in spectroscopic monitoring of hot gases is thus an extremely valuable source of industrial funding for fundamental research on small molecules. The needs of industry often differ from what chemists may expect, e.g. two industry co-funded PhD students at UCL studied ammonia spectroscopy in the telecomm region for monitoring applications as these instruments are much cheaper than the mid-infrared which has strong fundamental vibrational bands.