RESOLUTION OF MULTIPLE OVERLAPPING LINES IN THE ANALYSIS OF MOLECULAR-SPECTRA

We discuss two approaches to the treatment of blended lines in a molecular absorption spectrum. This problem of blended lines is relatively frequent in the dense and complex far-infrared and infrared spectra of methanol. The first technique utilizes an interactive computer line-profile analysis routine to resolve the blended features, while the second more directly separates closely adjacent peaks in the spectrum by employing 2f lock-in detection. In principle, both techniques can be applied to any spectrum where line overlapping occurs and in most cases make overlapped lines separable for analysis with practically the same precision as that for isolated lines. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.