Anti-resonant hollow-core fibers have proven great replacement for the conventional gas cells in spectroscopic systems. Although this new technology has been so far demonstrated almost only in laboratory conditions, it shows great potential for practical applications. New methods for enhancing the performance of hollow-core-fibers-based gas sensors will be presented in several novel methane sensing setups operating in both near- and mid-infrared. The performance of the setups will be discussed in terms of their applications in real-world sensing scenarios.
In this paper we presents a gas sensing setup based on interband cascade laser (ICL) and quantum cascade laser (QCL) combined with a negative-curvature hollow core fiber (HCF). We demonstrate simultaneous detection of water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide using wavelength modulation spectroscopy technique. With a 1m-long HCF we were able to record WMS signals with high signal/noise ratio for ambient concentrations of nitrous oxide and methane. Presented setup marks the first instance of a HCF-based sensor combining two mid-infrared semiconductor lasers (ICL near 3.3 μm and QCL near 4.5 μm) into a hollow-core fiber, giving good perspective for the development of portable, compact mid-infrared systems that enable multi-species detection with high sensitivity and selectivity.
We present a photothermal spectroscopy setup based on a broadband mid-infrared quantum cascade laser frequency comb (QCL-FC). In this PTS detection scheme, local refractive index changes of the gas sample due to absorption-induced local temperature changes are detected optically by a near-infrared heterodyne interferometer. Until now, this method has been demonstrated only with single-frequency lasers in the mid-infrared region, which limits its capability of targeting broadband absorption features. The QCL-FC used in this work covers the spectral range from 7.7 to 8.2 μm with a repetition rate of 9.9 GHz. A Fourier transform spectrometer modulates the intensity of QCL-FC, which excites photothermal effect of the gas sample in a Herriott multipass cell with optical path of 76 m. Spectroscopic measurements on nitrous oxide is performed as proof of concept. This technique combines the sensitivity of PTS detection and the broadband mid-infrared coverage of QCL-FC, which has a great potential to further promote the applications of QCL-FC in trace gas sensing.
Anti-resonant hollow-core silica fiber is used to demonstrate near- and mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy of methane. Molecular transitions near 6057 cm-1 (~1651 nm) and at 3057.7 cm-1 (~3270 nm) are targeted. Distributed feedback laser diode and interband cascade lasers are used as tunable laser sources. Detection of methane in ambient air is demonstrated using this mid-infrared system.
The spectral region between 1600 and 1800 nm is still a band where optical amplifiers struggle to achieve satisfactory gain and output power levels. The output power typically does not exceed few tens of milliwatts, what severely limits some applications. In this paper, the bismuth-doped fiber amplifier (BDFA) operating beyond 1600 nm is presented. We demonstrate the in-house developed BDFA capable of providing output powers that exceed 200 mW for wavelengths near 1700 nm. The performance of the amplifier is discussed and various properties of the device are presented such as gain characteristics and noise figure.
A bismuth-doped fiber amplifier (BDFA) operating between 1650 nm and 1700 nm will be presented. This wavelength region is particularly interesting due to potential application is laser-based methane detection. However, typical output power from laser diodes operating in this spectral region is only between 5 and 15 mW which may limit sensitivity and/or detection range in some spectroscopic systems. Application of fiber amplifiers could help to overcome these limitations. BDFA presented in this paper provides output powers up to 80 mW at 1651 nm and 100 mW at 1687 nm. We analyze the noise at the output of the amplifier and demonstrate its application to photothermal spectroscopy of methane near 1651 nm.
We present laser-based spectroscopy in the mid-infrared spectral region inside novel anti-resonant (AR) hollow core fiber (HCF). AR-HCF used in this work has small (few dB/m) attenuation near 4 µm and exceptionally small bending losses. This gives perspective for compact all-fiber-based mid-infrared chemical sensors with optical path lengths of several meters. For gas sensing demonstration, a distributed feed-back (DFB) quantum cascade laser (QCL) operating near 4.54 μm and a 3.2-m-long fiber were used to detect nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon monoxide (CO) using direct laser absorption spectroscopy (DLAS) and wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS).
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