Testing the attribution of selected DIBs to dehydrogenated coronene cations

Dehydrogenated coronene molecules have been proposed as the source of the UV-bump in the interstellar extinction curve as well as of some of the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs). To test this hypothesis we have recently undertaken a combined (a) modelling, and (b) observational work on the subject. (a) In the framework of a global approach to the photophysics of a PAH-like species in space, we used combined theoretical calculated properties, obtained with (time-dependent) density functional theory, and a Monte-Carlo model simulating the time evolution of the population of levels of a given molecule, to obtain the detailed ro-vibrational spectral structure of selected electronic transitions. (b) From the observational point of view, we compare our predictions with observations of the well-known λ6284 and λ5780 DIBs.