Laser spectroscopy of gas confined in nanoporous materials

Abstract

We show that high-resolution laser spectroscopy can probe surface interactions of gas confined in nano-cavities of porous materials. We report on strong line broadening and unfamiliar lineshapes due to tight confinement, as well as signal enhancement due to multiple photon scattering. This new domain of laser spectroscopy constitute a challenge for the theory of collisions and spectroscopic lineshapes, and open for new ways of analyzing porous materials and processes taking place therein.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, partly presented orally at 7th International Conference on Tunable Diode Laser Spectroscopy (TDLS), July 2009 in Zermatt, Switzerland; Accepted for Applied Physics Letters (December 2009)

References in corpus (2)

• Coherent resonant interactions and slow light with molecules confined in photonic band-gap fibers
• Exploring the van der Waals Atom-Surface attraction in the nanometric range

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Disordered, strongly scattering porous materials as miniature multipass gas cells
• Transport in quenched disorder: light diffusion in strongly heterogeneous turbid media
• Rb optical resonance inside a random porous medium
• Sub-Doppler resonances in the back-scattered light from random porous media infused with Rb vapor
• Probing molecules in gas cells of subwavelength thickness with high frequency resolution