We present a spectroscopic technique that combines the benefits of cavity ring-down spectroscopy and a hollowcore photonic crystal fiber. The 10m fiber is placed inside an optical cavity and acts both as the sample cell (volume = 442 nL) and as a waveguide. Due to the high reflectivity of the cavity mirrors and rather small coupling losses, the effective optical path length can be increased up to 70m. Therefore, as a figure of merit the volume per optical interaction path length is calculated to 6.3 nL m⁻¹. Oxygen detection is performed at 760 nm while scanning across an absorption line. The optical loss due to sample absorption is determined by measuring the ring-down time of light traveling inside the cavity. Results are compared to HITRAN database showing a discrepancy of only 2.5% of the absorption coefficient. This method is of interest for applications that require sensitive measurements on sample volumes of few nanoliters to microliters without the need of calibration.

Date Published: 2 June 2014
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9157, 23rd International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 915789 (2 June 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2059485

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9157:
23rd International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors
José M. López-Higuera; Julian D. C. Jones; Manuel López-Amo; José Luis Santos, Editor(s)