15min:

THOMAS H. BERGEMAN, Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800.

This will be a brief review of recent work in which DVR methods have been used to model spectroscopic data on various alkali dimer states. Many collaborators have contributed experimental data for studies on K₂ (A ¹ _u⁺ and b ³ _u); RbCs (A ^{1 +}, b ³ , c ³ _u and B ¹ , for which more data would be helpful!); Rb₂ (0_u⁺ dissociating to 5²S+5²P); Na₂ (A and b states again) and Cs₂ (a ³ _u⁺). The motivation has been to model photoassociation of laser-cooled atoms, to design routes for the production of ultracold molecules and to identify ``window states'' for stepwise excitation to higher triplet states. DVR has been useful for fitting data on mutually perturbing electronic states directly to analytic potentials plus spin-orbit or hyperfine interactions.