Dissertation Defense
- Title
- The Near-IR Spectrum of NO(X ̃2Π)-He Detected Through Excitation Into the A-State Continuum
- Guest Speaker
- Volker Beutner
- Guest Affiliation
- UGA Physics and Astronomy
- Guest Affiliation Url
- https://www.physast.uga.edu
- When
- Thursday, April 28, 2016 10:00 am - 11:00 am
- Location
- Room 204B, Physics Building
- Details
- Nitric Oxide (NO) plays an important role in areas such as Chemistry, Physics and Biology. In order to better understand the interactions of NO, its van der Waals complexes are the target of experimental and theoretical studies. Different NO-Rare gas complexes have been studied, however there has yet to be a report of any structured spectrum of the NO-He complex. In this thesis, a measurement of the near IR spectrum of NO-He in the region of the first NO overtone transition is presented. The IR absorption is detected by exciting the vibrationally excited complex into the A ̃-state continuum. The comparison to the theory of Klos, Chalasinski et al. (J. Chem. Phys. 112, 2195 (2000)) is in good agreement with the observed spectrum. Given the results, this thesis opens up the possibility of using Helium as a seed gas in order to study other NO van der Waals complexes. Dr. Mather now serves as Senior Project Scientist (95-present) for the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the great Hubble Space Telescope.