Molecules and Radiation: An Introduction to Modern Molecular Spectroscopy

This text begins with the mathematical and physical apparatus encountered in most first courses in molecular quantum mechanics. The first nine chapters provide an introduction to research monographs of Herzberg and others in the field. Included here are discussions of radiationless transitions, photoelectron spectroscopy, and other topics not usually considered in texts at this level. Chapters on the latest research and methods in the field—molecular beam and optical pumping spectroscopy, masers and lasers, and multiphoton spectroscopy—follow. The analogy of simple magnetic resonance spectroscopy to optical spectroscopy is explained using the Feynman-Vernon-Hellwarth theorem and then applied to saturation, self-induced transparency, and photon echoes.

The author writes that the book "is the outgrowth of several iterations of a one-semester graduate course in molecular spectroscopy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with supplementary material added. The emphasis of the course was on introducing students to the concepts and the methods of modern molecular spectroscopy so that the language would be familiar when the course proceeded to discuss quantum electronics, lasers, and related coherent and nonlinear optical phenomena."

Steinfeld of Massachusetts Institute of Technology