Atomic and molecular processes in external fields

Atomic and molecular processes in external fields are changes in structure, energy, motion, or spectra caused by applied electric or magnetic fields.

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Stark effect: The shifting and splitting of atomic or molecular energy levels in an electric field. It is the characteristic spectral response to an applied electric field.
Electric dipole moment: A measure of the separation of positive and negative charge in a system. Permanent dipoles couple directly to applied electric fields.
Nuclear magnetic resonance: A spectroscopic method that detects transitions between nuclear spin states in a magnetic field. It uses field-dependent spin energies to identify molecular environments.
Floquet theory: A framework for analyzing systems whose governing conditions vary periodically in time. Periodic fields create dressed states and dynamics beyond static-field energy shifts.
Zeeman effect: The splitting of spectral lines when atoms or molecules interact with a magnetic field. It describes how magnetic fields reshape energy levels and spectra.
Magnetic dipole moment: A vector quantity describing the strength and orientation of a system's magnetic source. Magnetic moments determine how atoms and molecules respond to magnetic fields.
Electron paramagnetic resonance: A spectroscopy method that detects transitions between electron spin states in a magnetic field. It probes unpaired electrons through their magnetic-field response.
Dressed state: A state of a system described together with its interaction with an external field or radiation. It captures how intense fields reshape the identity of atomic and molecular states.
Field ionization: The removal of an electron from an atom or molecule by a sufficiently strong electric field. Strong fields can turn level shifts into electron escape.
Angular momentum: A conserved physical quantity associated with rotational motion and intrinsic spin. Angular momentum organizes the states that fields split and mix.