Abstract
The application of quasi-phase matched (QPM) light sources in spectroscopy and chemical sensing is now well established in the 3-5μm mid-infrared spectral region.1,2 However, operation in the long-wave infrared fingerprint region (5-12μm) has been restricted in typical ferro-electric QPM materials by intrinsic absorption around 4-5μm. The advent of novel quasi-phase matched materials based on patterned-growth gallium arsenide now offer the possibility of broadly tunable IR sources covering both the long- (5-12μm) and mid-wave (3-5μm) infrared spectral regions.3,4,5 The 8-12 μm atmospheric window is a particularly important region for chemical sensing as many functional groups absorb there and absorption strengths can be up to ten times larger than in the mid-infrared region. Atmospheric transmission is also high in this region. We have employed orientation-patterned GaAs (OP-GaAs) as part of a broadly tunable, cw, difference frequency generation (DFG) source for ultra-trace gas detection applications. The DFG source forms the basis of a long-wave (8-12μm) infrared cavity ring-down spectrometer.
© 2004 Optical Society of America
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