The behavior of the atmosphere's most abundant gas, nitrogen, is still not known completely enough to understand many details of the way in which energy coming from the sun is transferred into the earth's upper atmosphere. Laboratory studies in which nitrogen is bombarded with photons and particles, and the resulting behavior carefully studied are needed to resolve outstanding issues. This award provides onetime support for a novel method of probing states of nitrogen of aeronomical interest by a relatively inexpensive laser method. It is not clear that the technique will be broadly applicable, but the proposed experiment is expected to provide useful data, and indicate whether a more extensive development of the technique is warranted.
