The study of molecular Rydberg states is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field. This valuable report, constituting the proceedings of a Royal Society Discussion reflects the state of the present theoretical knowledge, and includes an introductory chapter for the non-specialist. The material is organised to bring out the wealth of observable effects. Some states commonly lead to competitive predissociation and autoionization, with relevance to atmospheric and astrophysical processes. Others, with higher angular momenta, have much longer lifetimes and high electronic degeneracies, which on...

Molecular Rydberg states have many unusual properties, lending themselves to a diverse range of experimental applications. This book is designed to unravel the mysteries of molecular Rydberg states that lie beyond the scope of accepted spectroscopic theories. It is the first single-authored text to focus on the application of multi-channel quantum defect theory (MQDT) and ab initio theory to this special class of molecular systems, introducing readers to novel theoretical techniques. The scattering techniques of MQDT are examined, along with a unified description of bound states and...