Frontiers of Laser Spectroscopy of Gases

Spectroscopy Without Lasers.- Electronic Spectra.- Comparison of Classical and Laser Techniques.- Philosophical Remarks.- Infrared Lasers for Spectroscopy.- Survey of Lasers, Suitable for Spectroscopy in the Medium Infrared.- The Colour Centre Laser.- The Carbon Monoxide Laser.- Tunable Far Infrared Laser Spectroscopy.- Second Order Spectrometer.- Third Order Spectrometer.- Experimental Technique.- Results.- Conclusion.- Generation of Coherent Tunable Radiation.- Dye Lasers.- Generation of Tunable UV and IR.- Tunable VUV and XUV Radiation Generated by Frequency Mixing in Gases.- Third-Order Frequency Conversion.- Fifth-Order Frequency Mixing.- Applications.- Tunable Coherent Sources for Vacuum Ultraviolet Spectroscopy.- Stimulated Raman Scattering.- Harmonic Generation and Frequency Mixing.- Applications in Spectroscopy.- Conclusions.- The Free Electron Laser, Offspring of Synchrotron Radiation.- Synchrotron Radiation.- Insertion Devices.- Harmonic Generation.- Free Electron Laser.- Electron Accelerators.- Free Electron Laser Facilities.- Summary of FEL Properties and Applications.- Laser Doppler-Free Techniques in Spectroscopy.- In Radiofrequency Domain.- In Optical Domain.- Applications of Two-Photon Spectroscopy.- Atomic Laser Spectroscopy.- Laser Spectroscopy of Fundamental Systems.- Atomic Beams, Laser Cooling, Atomic Traps and Rydberg Atoms.- Optical Rotation Produced by Atoms.- Laser Raman Spectroscopy.- Theory of Linear Raman Processes.- Some New Aspects of Linear Gas Phase Raman Spectroscopy.- Theory of Nonlinear Raman Processes.- Coherent Raman Spectroscopy.- Techniques in Molecular Laser Spectroscopy.- Laser Stark Spectroscopy.- Laser Magnetic Resonance.- Laser Induced Fluorescence.- Double Resonance Spectroscopy.- Multiphoton Ionization Spectroscopy with Photoelectron and Mass Spectral Analysis.- Multiphoton Ionization Photoelectron Spectroscopy.- Multiphoton Ionizatíon Mass Spectroscopy.- Preparation of Free Radicals in Molecular Beams.- Applications of Laser Ionization Mass and Photoelectron Spectroscopy.- Summary.- Multiphoton Ionization Mass Spectrometry of Biomolecules.- Method.- Results.- Conclusion.- Unimolecular Decay of Energy-Selected Polyatomic Molecular Ions by Resonance-Enhanced Multiphoton Ionization in a Reflectron Mass Spectrometer.- Photoelectron Kinetic Energy Analysis.- Unimolecular Ion Decay in a Reflectron Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer.- Conclusion.- Infrared Spectroscopy of Molecular Ions.- Production of Molecular Ions.- Infrared Spectroscopy of Molecular Ions using Frequency Tunable Laser Sources.- Dynamics of the Photodissociation of Small Molecules.- Experimental Techniques to Analyse Product Motion.- Photodissociation of H2O in the First Absorption Band.- Weak and Strong Final State Interaction.- Conclusions.- Laser Spectroscopy of Chemical Intermediates in Supersonic Free Jet Expansions.- Supersonic Free Jet Expansions.- Spectroscopy of Ions.- Neutral Free Radicals.- Summary.- The Infrared Spectroscopy of the H3+ and HD+ Molecular Ions at their Dissociation Limits.- The Spectroscopy of H3+.- The Spectroscopy of HD+.- The Interpretation of Vibrational Overtone Spectra Observed by Fourier Transform and Laser Photoacoustic Spectroscopy.- Experimental Techniques.- Anharmonicity in a Diatomic Molecule.- A Simple Classical Model.- A Simple Quantum Mechanical Model.- Vibrational Band Intensities 475 Effects of Fermi Resonance, and Results on Dichloromethane.- Nickel Tetracarbonyl.- Discussion.- Interstellar Masers and Star Formation in the Galaxy.- Historical Notes.- Interstellar MolecularSpectroscopy.- Interstellar Masers.- Future Perspectives.