This book is written for graduate students just beginning research, for theorists curious about what experimentalists actually can and do measure, and for experimentalists bewildered by theory. It is a guide for potential users of spectroscopic data, and uses language and concepts that bridge the frequency-and time-domain spectroscopic communities.

Key topics, concepts, and techniques include: the assignment of simple spectra, basic experimental techniques, definition of Born-Oppenheimer and angular momentum basis sets and the associated spectroscopic energy level patterns (Hund's...