Modeling the Zeeman Effect in Planetary Atmospheric Radiative Transfer

Abstract: There are special effects in spectroscopy that must be considered in order to fully explain how molecular oxygen interacts with radiation in planetary atmospheres. One of these, the Zeeman effect, is described in this thesis. The Zeeman effect is the theory by which energy levels of atoms and molecules are altered by magnetism, and it causes both polarization and line shape to change. The first publication attached to this thesis, Paper I, details the technical and practical implementation of the Zeeman effect in a radiative transfer model. One potential use of magnetically altered spectroscopy is to remotely measure magnetism. Paper II discuss a method for such measurements on weakly magnetized planets by measuring the polarization caused by the Zeeman effect. The article brings up Mars as one potential candidate to utilize the method. To introduce the articles properly, the thesis starts with a short description of the underlying basic theory for radiative transfer and spectroscopy. After the theory chapter, a short description of input necessary to utilize the theory on operational and experimental platforms is presented.