Molecular physics and astrophysics group

Electron collisions		Water
	"The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory for a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws lead to equations much too complicated to be soluble."
	P.A.M. Dirac (1929)
Molecular Spectroscopy	Atmosperic models	Astrophysics

Modern computers mean that it is now possible to solve many problems in the physics of small molecules. The group addresses fundamental problems such as:

Spectroscopy		H2O (v,J) + hv		H2O (v*,J*)
Photodissociation		H3+ + hv		H2 + H+
Photoionization		H2 + hv		H2+ + e-
Electron scattering		H2+ + e-		H2+ + e-
Positron scattering		H2 + e+		H2 + e+
Electron impact excitation		H2 + e-		H2* + e-
Dissociative recombination		HeH+ + e-		He + H
Where * denotes excitation.

paying particular attention to those processes for which information is urgently required.

To do this we often use the latest supercomputers and develop appropriate algorithms. The group is involved in:

• ChemReact : the high performance computing initiative consortium on Chemical Reactions and Energy Exchange Processes.
• CCP2 : Collaborative Computational Project Two on Continuum States of Atoms and Molecules
• CCP6 : Collaborative Computational Project Six on Heavy Particle Dynamics