High Power Tunable Infrared Laser

This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities Program will assist the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University in the purchase of a tunable IR laser source. This equipment will be used in the following areas of research: (1) The Diode Probe Laser Technique; (2) Hot Atom Excitation of Polyatomic Vibrational States; (3) Diode Laser Probing of Collisions between High Energy and NO2 and Carbon Dioxide; (4) Kinematic Control of Reaction Dynamics; (5) Mapping the Reaction Coordinate in Multichannel Polyatomic Reactions; (6) Mapping the Reaction Coordinate in Polyatomic Reactions; (7) Multiphoton IR excitation. A tunable infrared laser can provide important information about chemical reactivity. Its use may enable breakthroughs in our understanding of the properties of reactive and nonreactive of molecules.