The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Support Our Science

Laurence Rothman

Center for Astrophysics

Smithsonian Research Associate

Laurence Rothman

lrothman@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Former director of the HITRAN molecular spectroscopic database project. Currently Smithsonian Research Associate.

Projects

HITRAN and HITEMP Database

Atomic and Molecular Physics

With techniques developed in quantum mechanics, molecular spectra can be modeled by a set of discrete fundamental parameters. The knowledge of these reference molecular spectroscopic parameters is essential to correctly characterize constituents of their environments, model their spectra and atmospheric conditions. Physicists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian maintain the HIgh-resolution TRANsmission (HITRAN) and HIgh TEMPerature (HITEMP) databases of molecular spectral parameters, along with the HITRAN Application Programming Interface (HAPI) which also enables one to access the database archive and process the data.