Abstract
Difference frequency generation was first used for molecular spectroscopy by Pine1 using an argon ion laser as the fixed frequency source and a tunable dye laser feeding a lithium niobate crystal. It generated 2.2 to 4.2 micron smoothly tunable cw infrared with a resolution of 15 MHz and was demonstrated by detecting the absorption lines of water vapor, ammonia, methane, and nitrous oxide. We2 and other colleagues3 have recently utilized the smoothly and continuously tunable advantages of Pine’s cw system with the modification of replacing the bulky and inefficient drive lasers with convenient room-temperature near-infrared diode lasers. This combination permits the design of portable trace-gas species detection systems without the use of cryogenically cooled lead salt lasers.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
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