Abstract
Naphthalene cations (C 10H 8 +) were produced in a slit jet coupled with an electronic discharge, and cavity ring down was used to obtain its absorption spectrum in the region 645–680 nm. Two of the strongest C 10H 8 + bands previously characterized by matrix isolation spectroscopy were found, both with a fractional blue shift of about 0.5%. This is the first gas-phase electronic absorption spectrum of an ionized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). This work opens the way for a direct comparison of laboratory PAH spectra with the diffuse interstellar bands (DIB), the origin of which still constitutes an open problem in astrophysics.
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