Instrumentation


Homemade grazing-incidence dye laser, pumped with the second harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser.
Time-of-flight mass spectrometer. This apparatus has been used to detect Cl and H atomic products from the photolysis of vibrationally excited methyl chloride by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization. The ions are produced in the chamber and the far end of the apparatus and are accelerated into a 1-meter long field-free flight tube and detected at the near end..
Apparatus for the study of the electronic spectroscopy of weakly bound complexes of the boron and aluminum atoms with rare gases and small molecules. The atoms are prepared by multiphoton dissociation of a volatile precursor by irradiation with a 193 nm excimer laser (center-left portion of the figure) in a free supersonic pulsed jet directed downward into the 10 in. diffusion pump. Atoms and complexes are detected downstream of the source by laser fluorescence excitation with a tunable dye laser (bottom-center postion of the figure).
Cavity ring-down spectrometer for detection of transient intermediates by long-path absorption spectroscopy. Light is injected into a resonant optical cavity through the mirror on the left-hand side. The photon lifetime is determined by measuring the decay of the light in the cavity with a photomultiplier which detects light passing out of the right-hand mirror. This spectrometer is being used to study the spectroscopy and kinetics of the H2CN redical, which is prepared by 193 nm photolysis of formaldoxime. The 193 nm light is passed into the cell through the rectangular window.
Flow apparatus for the study of inelastic molecular collisions between specific single rotational levels of a diatomic molecule. In the present series of experiments, high rotational levels of the CN radical are prepared by 193 nm excimer laser (top-right portion of the figure) photolysis of BrCN. State-to-state energy transfer is being studied by optical-optical double resonance.

[Last updated: March 19, 2003]