Thomas Hausmaninger

Doppler-broadened mid-infrared noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry based on an optical parametric oscillator for trace gas detection.

An optical parametric oscillator based Doppler-broadened (Db) noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry (NICE-OHMS) system suitable for addressing fundamental vibrational transitions in the 3.2-3.9 μm mid-infrared (MIR) region has been realized. An Allan-Werle analysis provides a detection sensitivity of methane of 1.5×10(-9)  cm(-1) with a 20 s integration time, which corresponds to 90 ppt of CH4 if detected at the strongest transition addressed at 40 Torr. This supersedes that of previous Db MIR NICE-OHMS demonstrations and suggests that the technique can be suitable for detection of both the environmentally important (13)CH(4) and CH3D isotopologues. It also opens up for detection of many other molecular species at ppt and sub-ppt concentration levels.

Doppler-broadened noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry down to 4 × 10 −13 cm −1 Hz −1/2 : implementation of a 50,000 finesse cavity

We report on the realization of a Doppler-broadened noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry (NICE-OHMS) instrumentation based on a high-finesse (50,000) cavity with a detection sensitivity of 4×10(-13)  cm(-1) Hz(-1/2). For the P(e)(11) transition targeted at 1.5316 μm, this corresponds to a C(2)H(2) concentration of 240 ppq (parts-per-quadrillion) detected at 100 Torr. The setup was originally affected by recurrent dips in the cavity transmission, which were attributed to excitation of high-order transverse mode by scattering from the mirrors. The effect of these was reduced by insertion of a small pinhole in the cavity.

Model for in-coupling of etalons into signal strengths extracted from spectral line shape fitting and methodology for predicting the optimum scanning range : demonstration of Doppler-broadened, noise-immune, cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectroscopy down to 9 × 10−14 cm−1

Expressions for the in-coupling of white noise and etalons into fitted signal strengths are derived. These show that the amount of noise picked up is affected by the scanning range. A methodology f ...

Narrowing of the linewidth of an optical parametric oscillator by an acousto-optic modulator for the realization of mid-IR noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry down to 10(-10) cm(-1) Hz(-1/2)

The linewidth of a singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (OPO) has been narrowed with respect to an external cavity by the use of an acousto-optic modulator (AOM). This made possible an improvement of the sensitivity of a previously realized OPO-based noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry instrument for the 3.2 - 3.9 µm mid-infrared region by one order of magnitude. The resulting system shows a detection sensitivity for methane of 2.4 × 10(-10) cm(-1) Hz(-1∕2) and 1.3 × 10(-10) cm(-1) at 20 s, which allows for detection of both the environmentally important (13)CH(4) and CH(3)D isotopologues in atmospheric samples.

Sensitive and broadband measurement of dispersion in a cavity using a Fourier transform spectrometer with kHz resolution

Optical cavities provide high sensitivity to dispersion since their resonance frequencies depend on the index of refraction. We present a direct, broadband, and accurate measurement of the modes of a high finesse cavity using an optical frequency comb and a mechanical Fourier transform spectrometer with a kHz-level resolution. We characterize 16000 longitudinal cavity modes spanning 16 THz of bandwidth in terms of center frequency, linewidth, and amplitude. Using the center frequencies we retrieve the group delay dispersion of the cavity mirror coatings and pure N2 with 0.1 fs2 precision and 1 fs2 accuracy, as well as the refractivity of the 3ν1 + ν3 absorption band of CO2 with 5 × 10-12 precision. This opens up for broadband refractive index metrology and calibration-free spectroscopy of entire molecular bands.

Shot-noise-limited Doppler-broadened noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry

Shot-noise-limited Doppler-broadened (Db) noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry (NICE-OHMS) has been realized by implementation of balanced detection. A characterization of the system based on Allan-Werle plots of the absorption coefficient, retrieved by fitting a model function to data, shows that the system has a white noise equivalent absorption per unit length per square root of bandwidth of 2.3×10-13  cm-1 Hz-1/2, solely 44% above the shot noise limit, and a detection sensitivity of 2.2×10-14  cm-1 over 200 s, both being unprecedented for Db NICE-OHMS. The white noise response follows the expected inverse square root dependence on power that is representative of a shot-noise-limited response, which confirms that the system is shot-noise-limited.

Gas modulation refractometry for high-precision assessment of pressure under non-temperature-stabilized conditions

The authors report on the realization of a novel methodology for refractometry-GAs modulation refractometry (GAMOR)-that decreases the influence of drifts in Fabry Perot cavity refractometry. The i ...

Differential noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectroscopy for improvement of the detection sensitivity by reduction of drifts from background signals

The detection sensitivity of noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectroscopy (NICE-OHMS) is often limited by background signals that bring in drifts. A novel realization of N ...

Doppler-broadened mid-Infrared NICE-OHMS System Based on an Optical Parametric Oscillator

An OPO-based NICE-OHMS instrument for trace gas detection addressing fundamental vibration transitions in the mid-IR (3.2-3.9 µm) range has been developed. It shows a detection sensitivity for CH4 ...