Professor Dr Martin Quack

Major Scientific Interests: High Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy, Spectroscopy of atmospheric trace gases, Kinetics of Intramolecular Primary Processes, Intramolecular energy flow, Infrared multiphoton excitation and laser chemistry, Fundamental symmetry principles for intramolecular dynamics and spectroscopy, Molecular Chirality and Parity Violation.
Martin Quack is the head of the group “Molecular Kinetics and Spectroscopy” at ETH Zürich. The main research theme is the understanding of fundamental, physical-chemical molecular primary processes. The basic research question concerns the fully quantum mechanical molecular motion, which is at the origin of all chemical reactions. An essential aspect of the research is the systematic combination of experimental and theoretical studies. The experimental studies concentrate on high resolution infrared spectroscopy, infrared multiphoton excitation and time resolved kinetic spectroscopy. Finally, the group studies fundamental symmetry principles in molecular processes and molecular chirality in relation to parity violation.
Martin Quack has contributed fundamental work on many aspects of molecular kinetics and spectroscopy. Among his achievements are the formulation of detailed state-to-state symmetry selection rules based on the principles of nuclear spin symmetry and parity conservation in chemical reactions, the formulation of a quantum statistical theory of infrared multiphoton excitation and its experimental verification, the quasiadiabatic channel approach to simple bond fission reactions and tunnelling rearrangement and stereomutation reactions, the development of the high resolution spectroscopic approaches to study attosecond to femtosecond and picosecond intramolecular energy flow leading to the discovery of the mode specific quantum dynamics of functional groups, as well as the theory of the quantum dynamics of chiral molecules including parity violation. He pioneered the correct theoretical calculation and the formulation of a new experimental approach to obtain the exceedingly small energy difference between enantiomers of chiral molecules, which is connected to some of the most fundamental problems of symmetry violation in physics, chemistry, and possibly biological evolution.
A survey of most of the current interests can be found in “Handbook of High Resolution Spectroscopy”, M. Quack, F. Merkt eds., 3 volumes, Wiley 2011 (in particular the articles authored and coauthored by M. Quack).