Neutron molecular spectroscopy

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Abstract
Neutron scattering is playing an increasingly important, and sometimes even unique, role in molecular spectroscopy. In this article we describe a unified approach to the study of molecular forces, correlating thermodynamic, conformational, structural and spectroscopic data on atomic and molecular systems. Our emphasis is on the basic information on the intermolecular potential function that can be extracted from the study of the dynamical properties of these systems. In particular we will describe the development of empirical potentials for chemical systems and discuss current techniques in neutron spectroscopy. Improvements in empirical potential functions and calculational techniques promise to upgrade neutron molecular spectroscopy into a powerful tool for probing intermolecular forces in complex systems.