Molecules in Magnetic Fields

Molecules probe cool matter in the Universe and various astrophysical objects. Their ability to sense magnetic fields provides new insights into magnetic properties of these objects. During the past fifteen years we have carried out a theoretical study of molecular magnetic effects such as the Zeeman, Paschen-Back and Hanle effects and their applications for inferring magnetic structures and spatial inhomogeneities on the Sun, cool stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets from molecular spectro-polarimetry (e.g., Berdyugina 2011). Here, we present an overview of this study and compare our theoretical predictions with recent laboratory measurements of magnetic properties of some molecules. We present also a new web-based tool to compute molecular magnetic effects and polarized spectra which is supported by the ERC Advanced Grant HotMol.