Multiheterodyne spectroscopy using interband cascade lasers

Abstract

While mid-infrared radiation can be used to identify and quantify numerous chemical species, contemporary broadband mid-IR spectroscopic systems are often hindered by large footprints, moving parts and high power consumption. In this work, we demonstrate multiheterodyne spectroscopy using interband cascade lasers, which combines broadband spectral coverage with high spectral resolution and energy-efficient operation. The lasers generate up to 30 mW of continuous wave optical power while consuming less than 0.5 W of electrical power. A computational phase and timing correction algorithm is used to obtain kHz linewidths of the multiheterodyne beat notes and up to 30 dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio. The versatility of the multiheterodyne technique is demonstrated by performing both rapidly swept absorption and dispersion spectroscopic assessments of low-pressure ethylene (C${}_2$H${}_4$) acquired by extracting a single beat note from the multiheterodyne signal, as well as broadband multiheterodyne spectroscopy of methane (CH${}_4$) acquired with all available beat notes with microsecond temporal resolution and an instantaneous optical bandwidth of 240 GHz. The technology shows excellent potential for portable and high-resolution solid state spectroscopic chemical sensors operating in the mid-infrared.

References in corpus (10)

• Coherent, multi-heterodyne spectroscopy using stabilized optical frequency combs
• Adaptive real-time dual-comb spectroscopy
• Coherent Dual Comb Spectroscopy at High Signal to Noise
• Spectroscopy of the Methane ν3 Band with an Accurate Mid-Infrared Coherent Dual- Comb Spectrometer
• Mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy with electro-optic modulators
• Self-corrected chip-based dual-comb spectrometer
• Adaptive dual-comb spectroscopy in the green region
• Adaptive sampling dual terahertz comb spectroscopy using free-running dual femtosecond lasers
• Real-time dual frequency comb spectroscopy in the near infrared
• Silicon-chip-based mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Frequency comb spectroscopy
• Computational coherent averaging for free-running dual-comb spectroscopy
• Mid-infrared feed-forward dual-comb spectroscopy at 3 $\mu$m
• On-chip mid-infrared and THz frequency combs for spectroscopy
• A mid-infrared dual-comb spectrometer in step-sweep mode for high-resolution molecular spectroscopy
• Upconversion mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy
• Terahertz hyperspectral imaging with dual chip-scale combs