Professor James L. Skinner is supported by a grant from The Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to develop theoretical models which will assist chemists in interpreting experimental spectroscopic data for liquids. Skinner will develop theories for interpreting relaxation rates for chemical processes occuring in liquids which may be studied using experimental spectroscopic techniques such as NMR, ESR, vibrational and optical spectroscopy. Skinner will perform theoretical research in three general areas of statistical mechanics: 1) He will develop stochastic models for describing population and phase relaxation observed in NMR, ESR, vibrational and optical spectroscopy; 2) He will develop a theory to deal with lineshapes of optical spectroscopically measured impurities in the liquid phase; and 3) He will use a new approach which he has named quantum- connectivity- renormalization-theory to study localization in models with liquid-like order.
