Tunable supercontinuum fiber laser source for BRDF measurements in the STARR II gonioreflectometer

Abstract

STARR II is a planned NIST facility for spectral measurements of specular reflectance and diffuse bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) that is the follow-on to the current NIST STARR (Spectral Tri-function Automated Reference Reflectometer) facility. STARR II will improve and expand on the measurement capabilities of STARR, increasing spectral coverage in the short-wave infrared spectral region and adding out-of-plane BRDF measurement capability. We present characteristics of a tunable light source constructed for STARR II, which is based upon a supercontinuum fiber laser and has a tuning range from 500 nm to 2450 nm, alongside those of the current lampbased system in STARR. We then discuss considerations for measuring BRDF using this source. The STARR II goniometer will employ an articulated robotic arm to center and orient the sample, and we calculate the transformations from orientation of the sample and receiver to incident and scattering angles for measurements of in-plane and out-ofplane BRDF. We also present, for the first time, an analytic expression for the correction of measured BRDF to true BRDF due to the finite illumination area and collection aperture, and to the effects of uniformity of illumination. Finally, we present exploratory BRDF measurements on a diffuse sample made using the tunable supercontinnum source.