Multipass interferometer

This uitrasonio-opticai technique (or haif-opticai technique [89]) was aiso a hyphenated technique in terms of energy sources viz. thermai and opticai for phonon and photon production, respectiveiy). Thermai surface phonons restrict practical application of the technique owing to their iow scattering efficiency, which results in overly long data collection times (typicaiiy severai hours for a singie spectrum, even with advanced multipass interferometers). Similar to active Raman spectroscopy, coherent acoustic phonons are assumed to be excited by two narrow-line frequency tunable laser beams at different frequencies or by laser pulses of short duration compared to the acoustic period. 

Figure 2 shows the interference fringes produced by the interferometer as the mirror moves along its track. The independent variable in this plot is optical path difference rather than mirror position. The use of optical path difference simplifies the discussion when more exotic interferometer designs employing multiple moving mirrors, or multipass optics are used. 

Another important application of infrared gas analysis is for trace analysis, such as for the analysis of a dilute mixture (in the ppm range) or an environmental specimen. In such cases, individual analytes are measured from the high ppb levels to the lO s or lOO s of ppm. For such analyses, extended path lengths are required, and typically multipass gas cells from 1 to 20 m in path length are used. One very specific application is an open-path measurement for ambient air monitoring in manufacturing plants or in toxic waste sites in which no cell is used. Instead, a source and interferometer combination are focused on a remote detection system with the aid of special telescope optics. In such cases, several hundreds of meters of effective path length are used. 

In spectroscopy using continuous laser tuning it is very important to be able to monitor the change in wavelength. For this purpose, a stable multipass interferometer (Sect.6.2.3) can be used from which the fringes are recorded together with the spectrum [9.43]. 

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