Rapid spectroscopic gas sensing using optical linear chirp chain.

Abstract

Spectroscopic gas analysis for monitoring transient events in fast processes requires high spectrum acquisition rate with low uncertainty; however, so far high-speed spectroscopic gas detection with sufficient spectral resolution and spectral span is still challenging. Here, we propose an innovative method based on optical linear chirp chain (OLCC) for rapid acquisition of high-resolution gas spectra with a rate up to the order of MHz with 100% duty cycle, spectral resolution at 10-MHz level and spectral span > 20 GHz. The OLCC is generated by high-speed optical modulation driven by a digital arbitrary waveform generator in combination with a four-wave-mixing process, exhibiting a highly linear frequency chirp (linearity error of ~10-4) and low level of residual amplitude modulation (<1%). An image denoising method based on nonlocal means algorithm is exploited to reduce the high-frequency noise while guaranteeing the response time and spectral resolution. We demonstrate this method by monitoring a fast charging process of acetylene gas into a vacuumized gas cell, clearly unfolding gas pressure oscillations at μs time scale. Our proposed OLCC-based spectroscopic method opens up prospects for the development of high-speed spectrometers and optical sensors.