General Physics Physics Seminar 24 October 2002


Four years of Molecular Dynamics research in Rijnhuizen, an overview

Deniz van Heijnsbergen

FOM Instituut voor Plasmafysica 'Rijnhuizen'
Nieuwegein, The Netherlands


Four years ago the FOM program "FELIX induced dynamics of molecular processes" started with a budget of around 2.5 million euros at this institute. A new department "Molecular Dynamics" was created of which the focus is to exploit the free electron laser FELIX for research on molecular systems, thereby gaining fundamental insight of the system's structural and chemical properties.

One of the first projects within this department concentrated on the study of gas phase clusters. Structural information of these species can be obtained by investigating their vibrational structure with the help of FELIX. After four years (and the end of the program near) it is time to evaluate the results and see what we have learned.

Questions that will be addressed are very basic in nature. To give you a flavour: What is FELIX? How is FELIX used? What are clusters? How are they generated? How are they interrogated? What do the results look like? What can be learned from this? Et cetera.

The speaker will endeavour to make this a truly general physics seminar.