Electron momentum spectroscopy and its applications to molecules of biological interest

Energy and wave function are the heart and soul of Schrödinger quantum mechanics. Electron momentum spectroscopy (EMS) so far provides the most stringent test for quantum mechanical models (theory, basis sets and the combination of both) through observables such as binding energy spectra and Dyson orbital momentum distributions. The capability of EMS to measure Dyson orbitals of a molecule as momentum distributions provides a unique opportunity to assess the models of quantum mechanics based on orbitals, rather than on energy dominated (mostly isotropic) properties. Recently, the author introduced a technique called dual space analysis (DSA), which is based on EMS and quantum mechanics to analyze orbital based information in the more familiar position space as well as the less familiar momentum space. In this article, the development of EMS and DSA is reviewed through the applications to molecules of biological interest such as amino acids, nucleic acid bases and recently nucleosides. The emphasis is the applications of DSA to study isomerization processes and chemical bonding mechanisms of these molecules.