Abstract

A pulsed TEA CO₂ laser is used as excitation source in the photoacoustic experiments. The apparatus is equipped with two nearly identical photoacoustic cells in tandem. The first cell, filled with a constant pressure of absorbing gas is used as a reference to monitor the laser power. The second cell is the reaction and analysis chamber. The signals from the home-made microphones are preamplified and fed into a Biomation 8100 transient recorder. A Tracor TN-1710 digital analyser, together with a floppy disk system and a teletype, are employed for further signal processing. The photoacoustic signal from the second cell is divided by the signal obtained from the reference cell. The analysis of the acoustic signals is performed by integrating the peaks corresponding to the first two pressure pulses. This procedure is compared with an amplitude analysis of the acoustic signal.

© 1981 Optical Society of America