Theory of Ultrahigh Rydberg States of Molecules and Clusters

犹他州州立大学的大卫·法雷利教授得到了理论和计算化学项目的支持。本研究的重点是研究零电子动能(ZEKE)光谱中典型激发态的超高分子里德堡态。这些里德堡态还可以用来探测束流实验中含有杂质离子的超流团簇的动力学。这种状态存在于量子力学的对应原理极限。这项研究将发展半经典理论来描述分子核和里德堡电子自由度之间的耦合。将发展新的绝热近似来描述这种系统的动力学，以及使用复坐标法描述与外部电场和/或磁场的相互作用。研究特殊情况下的原子和分子，对化学和物理科学的发展至关重要。尤其是超流体状态继续对技术和通信产生巨大影响。最近，人们把重点放在了“纳米技术”上，在这种技术中，设备的构造利用了这样一个事实，即非常微小的结构的物理可以被不可见的量子效应所支配。这项研究将在阐明有限大小样品中的超流转变的背景下，促进对这种单一(或少数)电子能谱的理解。

Professor David Farrelly of Utah State University is being supported by the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program. The focus of this research is to investigate ultrahigh molecular Rydberg states that are typically excited in zero-electron kinetic-energy (ZEKE) spectroscopy. These Rydberg states might also be used to probe the dynamics of superfluid clusters containing impurity ions from seeding in beam experiments. Such states lie at the correspondence principle limit of quantum mechanics. This research will develop semiclassical theories to describe the coupling between molecular core and Rydberg electronic degrees of freedom. New adiabatic approximations will be developed to describe the dynamics of such systems as well as the interactions with external electric and or magnetic fields using complex coordinate methods. Studies of atoms and molecules in unusual situations, are of critical importance to the advancement of the chemical and physical sciences. The superfluid state in particular continues to have an enormous impact on technology and communications. Recently emphasis has been directed to `nanotechnology` in which devices are constructed that exploit the fact that the physics of very small structures can be dominated by quantum effects not visible in the bulk. This research will advance the understanding of such single (or few) electron spectroscopies in the context of elucidating the superfluid transition in finite size samples.