Laser induced fluorescence of trapped molecular ions

The chemistry of molecular ion reactions is important to many processes such as plasmas and combustion systems. Also, many practical devices such as lasers depend upon the existence of ions. However, the amount of spectroscopic and dynamical information on ionic processes is very limited. For instance, at the present time only about sixty molecular ions have been observed spectroscopically and only a few of these have been studied in great detail. The specific aim of this research is to obtain spectroscopic measurements of molecular ions, such as CO(+), CN(+), NH(+), and NH2(+), confined in an R-F quadrupole trap.