The laser as a radiation source with temporal and spatial coherence has made a tremendous impact in the different fields of science. As a result, new and exciting research has been developing allover the world. Laser spectro scopy shares a large fraction of this research, and in the last decade nu merous books and monographs have been published on this subject. Most of these books and monographs contain the work done in the physics community. Very few books represent the advances made in laser chemistry, a field that is flourishing and whose future is indeed very exciting. It was felt that a meeting that focused on the important questions being asked in the chemistry community, and on new and possible directions in laser chemistry, was needed. This three-day conference, held at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, on March 20-22, 1978, covered five important areas in laser chemistry: Laser-induced chemistry, picosecond processes and techniques, nonlinear optical spectroscopy and dephasing processes, multiphoton exci tation in molecules, and molecular dynamics by molecular beams.
