Publications Details

A Terahertz VRT spectrometer employing quantum cascade lasers

Cole, William T.S.; Lee, Alan W.M.; Kao, Tsung Y.; Hu, Qing; Reno, J.L.; Saykally, Richard J.; Hlavacek, Nik C.

The first application of a commercial Terahertz quantum cascade laser (QCL) system for high resolution spectroscopy of supersonic beams is presented. Here, the QCLs exhibited continuous linear voltage tuning over a 2 GHz range about a center frequency of 3.762 THz with ~1 ppm resolution. A sensitivity of ~1 ppm fractional absorption was measured with a single pass optical system. Multipass operation at the quantum noise limit of the stressed photoconductor detector would produce a 100-fold improvement.