Development of an instrument for spectroscopy of isomer-selected molecular ions in the context of the diffuse interstellar bands
Dirigée par Ugo Jacovella, Bérenger Gans
This thesis presents the “iSELECTION » instrument, developed to investigate the unidentified Diffuse Interstellar Bands (DIBs). They correspond to the absorption of starlight by molecular species populating the diffuse molecular clouds. More than six hundred DIBs have been reported for more than a century, and, so far, only four were unambiguously attributed, to only one carrier: the football-shaped carbon cluster C60+. The instrument built in the realm of this thesis aims to generate and select ions with particularly stable structures, and study their absorption spectrum in the gas phase in the visible range. The chosen ions are the metal carbides — carbon clusters with the addition of one metal atom. iSELECTION was used to characterize them by mass and shape, investigate their spectroscopy, and, additionally, study their reactivity and their charge state.