Abstract
We present mid-infrared laser-induced thermal grating spectroscopy (IR-LITGS) using excitation radiation around 3 μm generated by a simple broadband optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Acetylene as a typical small hydrocarbon molecule is used as an example target species. A mid-infrared broadband OPO pumped by the fundamental output of a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser was used to generate the pump beams, with pulse energies of 6-10 mJ depending on the wavelength. The line width of the OPO idler beam was ∼5 cm-1, which is large enough to cover up to six adjacent acetylene lines. The probe beam was the radiation of a 532 nm cw solid state laser with 190 mW output power. Signals were generated in atmospheric pressure gas flows of N2, air, CO2 and Ar with small admixtures of C2H2. A detection limit of less than 300 ppm was found for a point measurement of C2H2 diluted in N2. As expected, the oscillation frequency of the IR-LITGS signal was found to have a large dependency on the buffer gas, which allows determination of the speed of sound. Moreover, the results reveal a very strong collisional energy exchange between C2H2 and CO2 compared to the other gases. This manifests as significant local heating. In summary, the MIR-LITGS technique enables spectroscopy of fundamental vibrational transitions in the infrared via detection in the visible spectral range.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1034-1043 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Applied Spectroscopy |
Volume | 70 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 Jun 1 |
Subject classification (UKÄ)
- Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics
- Fluid Mechanics and Acoustics
Free keywords
- acetylene
- Hydrocarbon detection
- laser-induced gratings
- LITGS
- nonlinear optical spectroscopy
- quenching