Observational science at millimetre wavelengths: Imaging, imagining and exciting!

In this review paper we will explore how current millimetrewave experimental systems are being used in a variety of ways to image, imagine and indeed excite the world around us. We are now familiar with the considerable number of demonstrated millimetrewave systems that provide images of people for security screening of concealed weapons and contraband. Most systems are large and employ some form of beam scanning to achieve a video rate (20Hz) image. We will explore what technical developments are required to make a truly portable imaging device (similar to currently available thermal imagining cameras). A contributing cause to disease is known to be due to mis-folding of proteins. But how proteins fold in order to perform a biological task is a deep mystery. The difficulty in understanding what happens comes from not being able to imagine clearly what happens experimentally. Millimetrewave spectroscopy based on high resolution systems (network analysers) offers the biologist a way to identify vibrational modes from absorption spectra. Electrical engineers offer biologists means for understanding their molecular systems as equivalent electrical circuits. Standard, powerful, circuit-solver, commercial software can therefore be then used to 'solve' these circuits in order to truly and directly give mechanical interpretation of molecular bond behaviour. From the measured frequency absorption spectra of the protein we seek to learn from the protein's vibrational structure it's folding trajectory. Finally we will look at how exciting specific vibrational modes of molecules can be used to effect new reaction pathways to create an intelligent and engineered approach to RF-assisted chemistry.