A Terahertz VRT spectrometer employing quantum cascade lasers

Journal Article · Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Chemical Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2015.08.027· OSTI ID:1512915

Cole, William T. S. ^[1]; Hlavacek, Nik C. ^[1]; Lee, Alan W. M. ^[2]; Kao, Tsung -Yu ^[2]; Hu, Qing ^[3]; Reno, John L. ^[4]; Saykally, Richard J. ^[1]

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1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
2. LongWave Photonics L.L.C., Mountain View, CA (United States)
3. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
4. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The first application of a commercial Terahertz quantum cascade laser (QCL) system for high resolution spectroscopy of supersonic beams is presented. Here, the QCLs exhibited continuous linear voltage tuning over a 2 GHz range about a center frequency of 3.762 THz with ~1 ppm resolution. A sensitivity of ~1 ppm fractional absorption was measured with a single pass optical system. Multipass operation at the quantum noise limit of the stressed photoconductor detector would produce a 100-fold improvement.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1512915
• Report Number(s): SAND-2015-9048J; 666879
• Journal Information: Chemical Physics Letters, Vol. 638, Issue C; ISSN 0009-2614
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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