Modern Optical Spectroscopy

Book excerpt: The student edition of Modern Optical Spectroscopy includes a new set of exercises for each chapter. The exercises and problems generally emphasize basic points, and often include simpli?ed absorption or emission spectra or molecular orbitals that can be evaluated easily with the aid of a calculator or spreadsheet. Students who are adept at computer programming will ?nd it instructive to try to write algorithms that also could be applied to larger, more complicated sets of data. Spectraintroducedinsomeofthe problems forChaps.4and5areusedagain in later chapters to illustrate how quantities calculated from the spectra can be applied to topics such as resonance energy transfer and exciton interactions. Seattle, November, 2008 William W. Parson Preface This book began as lecture notes for a course on optical spectroscopy that I taught for graduate students in biochemistry, chemistry, and our interdisciplinary programs in molecular biophysics and biomolecular structure and design. I started expanding the notes partly to try to illuminate the stream of new experimental information on photosynthetic antennas and reaction centers, but mostly just for fun. I hope that readers will ?nd the results not only useful, but also as stimulating as I have.