Spectral line shapes investigation with Pound-Drever-Hall-locked frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy

Published

October 23, 2013

Author(s)

A. Cygan, S. Wojtewicz, J. Domyslawska, Piotr Maslowski, Katarzyna E. Bielska, M. Piwinski, K. Stec, R.S. Trawinski, F Ozimek, C. Radzewicz, Hisashi Abe, T. Ido, Joseph T. Hodges, D Lisak, R. Ciurylo

Abstract

A review of recent experiments involving a newly developed Pound-Drever-Hall-locked frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy (PDH-locked FS-CRDS) system is presented. By comparison to standard FS-CRDS, the PDH lock of the probe laser to the ring-down cavity optimized coupling into the cavity, thus increasing the ring-down signal acquisition rate nearly 300-fold to 14 kHz and reducing the noise-equivalent absorption coefficient by more than an order of magnitude to 7×10−11 cm−1. We discuss how averaging approximately 1000 spectra yielded a signal-to-noise ratio of 220000. We also discuss how the spectrum frequency axis was linked to an optical frequency comb, thus enabling absolute frequency measurements of molecular optical transitions at sub-MHz levels. Applications of the spectrometer to molecular line-shape studies are also presented. For these investigations, we use semi-classical line-shape models that consider the influence of Dicke narrowing as well as the speed dependence of the pressure broadening and shifting to fit spectra. We show that the improved precision and spectrum fidelity of the spectrometer enable precise determinations of line-shape parameters. We also discuss the importance of line-shape analysis with regard to the development of new spectroscopic databases as well as in the optical determination of the Boltzmann constant.

Citation

The European Physical Journal Special Topics

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01990-0

Local Download

Keywords

cavity ring-down spectroscopy, line shape, speed dependence

Citation

Cygan, A. , Wojtewicz, S. , Domyslawska, J. , Maslowski, P. , Bielska, K. , Piwinski, M. , Stec, K. , Trawinski, R. , Ozimek, F. , Radzewicz, C. , Abe, H. , Ido, T. , Hodges, J. , Lisak, D. and Ciurylo, R. (2013), Spectral line shapes investigation with Pound-Drever-Hall-locked frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy, The European Physical Journal Special Topics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01990-0, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=913686 (Accessed October 13, 2025)