Friday, 1st July at 2.00pm @ the JAC

ABSTRACT:

Water is the third most common molecule. Its spectrum is particularly rich and water lines have been detected in locations as diverse as: the ISM, star forming regions, circumstellar outflows, comets, sun spots and red giants. Also, it is the principal source of opacity in M, L and T dwarfs where it typically accounts for in excess of 60% of absorption in the IR.

Only a very small proportion of the lines in the water spectrum are known experimentally and consequently all model atmospheres and much spectroscopic work depend on line lists that have been generated ab initio using quantum mechanical modelling.

All previous line lists suffer from incompleteness and inaccuracy (particularly at higher energies). We have produced a new water line list, that addresses these shortcomings. It contains over 505 million transitions!

A brief introduction to the computation of the line list will be given, but the main part of the talk will be concerned with recent applications. BT2 will be published shorly.