Frontiers in spectroscopy

Abstract

We review the frontiers of spectroscopy from a historical perspective, starting with the development of atomic spectroscopy about 150 years ago, followed by some comments on selected previous Faraday Discussions. As the spectrum of frontiers at the Faraday Discussion 150 is very broad, we give only a brief survey providing a map of the various frontiers approached today. This is followed by an exemplary discussion of one particular frontier towards the spectroscopic detection of symmetry violations in fundamental physics. In particular the understanding of parity violation in chiral molecules has recently made great progress. We briefly describe the advances made in recent decades as well as the current status of theory and experiments in this exciting field of research. We conclude with an outlook on open questions and frontiers of the future in spectroscopy.