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Nie QX, Peng YB, Chen QH et al. Agile cavity ringdown spectroscopy enabled by moderate optical feedback to a quantum cascade laser. Opto-Electron Adv 7, 240077 (2024). doi: 10.29026/oea.2024.240077
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Article Open Access
Agile cavity ringdown spectroscopy enabled by moderate optical feedback to a quantum cascade laser
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Abstract
Cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS), relying on measuring the decay time of photons inside a high-finesse optical cavity, offers an important analytical tool for chemistry, physics, environmental science, and biology. Through the reflection of a slight amount of phase-coherent light back to the laser source, the resonant optical feedback approach effectively couples the laser beam into the optical cavity and achieves a high signal-to-noise ratio. However, the need for active phase-locking mechanisms complicates the spectroscopic system, limiting its primarily laboratory-based use. Here, we report how passive optical feedback can be implemented in a quantum cascade laser (QCL) based CRDS system to address this issue. Without using any phase-locking loops, we reflect a moderate amount of light (–18.2 dB) to a continuous-wave QCL simply using a fixed flat mirror, narrowing the QCL linewidth from 1.2 MHz to 170 kHz and significantly increasing the laser-cavity coupling efficiency. To validate the method’s feasibility and effectiveness, we measured the absorption line (P(18e), 2207.62 cm−1) of N2O in a Fabry–Perot cavity with a high finesse of ~52000 and an inter-mirror distance of 33 cm. This agile approach paves the way for revolutionizing existing analytical tools by offering compact and high-fidelity mid-infrared CRDS systems.-
Keywords:
- cavity ringdown spectroscopy /
- optical feedback /
- quantum cascade laser /
- gas sensing
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References
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Nie QX, Peng YB, Chen QH et al. Agile cavity ringdown spectroscopy enabled by moderate optical feedback to a quantum cascade laser. Opto-Electron Adv 7, 240077 (2024). doi: 10.29026/oea.2024.240077
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Figure 1.
Principle of the agile CRDS with moderate optical feedback to a QCL. HWP: half-wave plate; AOM: acousto-optic modulator; PBS: polarizing beamsplitter; PM: plane mirror; P: power meter; ISO: optical isolator; M1, M2: cavity mirrors; PZT: piezoelectric actuator; PD: photodetector; DAQ: data acquisition card.
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Figure 2.
Characterization of QCL linewidth. (a) Experimental setup. The absorption line of CO sealed in a gas cell (15 Torr) is used as a frequency discriminator. (b) Typical transmission signal of the QCL through the CO reference cell. (c) Variation of QCL linewidth with the feedback rate. The dashed line indicates the linewidth of the free-running QCL.
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Figure 3.
Comparison of the cavity-transmitted signals with different levels of optical feedback. Four ringdown events obtained by scanning the cavity length with a triangle waveform (5 Hz) are shown in each figure. The QCL is operating either at the free-running state or with optical feedback (from −49 dB to −14.8 dB).
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Figure 4.
Cavity ringdown measurement with a feedback rate of −18.2 dB. The cavity is in a vacuum. (a) Characterization of a single cavity ringdown event with an incident optical power of 0.4 mW. The residual between the measurement and exponential fit is plotted in the bottom panel, and the SNR of the ringdown signal is 162. (b) Allan deviation analysis of the ringdown time measurement. (c) Continuous measurement of more than 300 ringdown events.
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Figure 5.
High-resolution and high-sensitivity molecular spectroscopy of trace amount of N2O. (a) Measured absorption spectrum of 10 ppb N2O. The residual of the spectral fitting by the Lorentzian function is plotted in the bottom panel. (b) Comparison of the CRDS measurements with the nominal concentrations of N2O (1–10 ppb). The horizontal error bar represents the uncertainty in the nominal gas concentration, while the vertical error bar (too small to be visible) represents the 1−σ standard deviation of 300 CRDS measurements.
