Abstract

A single-pass, compact, and low-power-consumption methane sensing system is presented, and its sensitivity is examined for a set of reference cells with pressures of 7.4, 74, and 740 Torr and the same methane concentration at laboratory temperature of 23°C. A GaSb-based continuous-wave distributed feedback tunable diode laser at 3270 nm and wavelength modulation spectroscopy were employed to collect 2f spectra in the ${\nu }_3$, ${\mathrm{R}}_3$ band of ${}^{12}{\mathrm{CH}}_4$. The collected 2f spectra were fitted to a modulated Voigt line profile model. An Allan–Werle variance analysis shows that the best detectivity, 4 ppbm, is obtained for the highest pressure cell. At pressures of 74 and 7.4 Torr the detectivities are 16 and 28 ppbm, respectively. For these low-pressure cells, further sensitivity improvements were achieved using a large modulation depth ($m>2.2$) at the expense of spectral resolution.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

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