EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL STUDIES OF THE NIOBIUM MONOCARBIDE (NbC) MOLECULE.

Author Institution: Stockholm University, Box 6730, S-113 85 Stockholm, Sweden.; National Research Council of Canada, 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0R6.Laser induced fluorescence studies have been conducted on the jet-cooled NbC molecule. Several band systems lie in the yellow-red region. One of them has been characterized as a ${^{2}}\Pi-^{2}\Delta$ transition in which the ${^{2}}\Delta$ state is believed to be the ground electronic state. One vibronic band has so far been examined at high enough resolution to resolve the nuclear magnetic hyperfine structure which has been analyzed and interpreted. Further information on this molecule has been obtained theoretically using the density functional formalism. A detailed account of these calculations will also be presented