Spectroscopy of Large Molecules in the Gas Phase

David W. Pratt, PhDSPECTROSCOPY OF LARGE MOLECULES IN THE GAS PHASEPhilip John Morgan, Ph.D.University of Pittsburgh, 2010AbstractStructural and dynamical properties of molecular systems in both the ground and excited electronic states can be studied using rotationally resolved electronic spectroscopy in the gas phase. Analyses based on the collected experimental measurements and their spectral details supplemented by ab initio calculations provide the structural and dynamical information. In this work, relatively large molecules are studied, leading to conformational assignments of several molecules, the potential barriers for hindered methyl group torsional motion, the identity of different possible van der Waals complexes, evidence of excited state intramolecular proton transfer, and the determination of the ground and excited state dipole moments of several molecules