Continuum

The continuum in ATM 2009 is divided into two components

The dry component,

which comes from collision induced absorption due to transient eletric dipole moments generated in binary interactions of symmetric molecules with eletric quadrupole moments such as N$_2$ and , and the relaxation of the absorption.

The wet component,

which is indeed a pseudo-continuum. It is a modeling of the long-range linewidth of the water lines, whose true shape is not known accurately enough beyond a few times the halfwidth from the line centers.

Both components have been modeled from 200 GHz to 1.1 THz using FTS measurements at CSO on Mauna Kea.