Mid-infrared supermirrors with finesse exceeding 400 000
Description
Data from peer-reviewed publication: G.-W. Truong et al., Mid-infrared supermirrors with finesse exceeding 400 000, Nature Communications. For trace gas sensing and precision spectroscopy, optical cavities incorporating low-loss mirrors are indispensable for path length and optical intensity enhancement. Optical interference coatings in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) spectral regions have achieved total optical losses below 2 parts per million (ppm), enabling a cavity finesse in excess of 1 million. However, such advancements have been lacking in the mid-infrared (MIR), despite substantial scientific interest. Here, we demonstrate a significant breakthrough in high-performance MIR mirrors, reporting substrate-transferred single-crystal interference coatings capable of cavity finesse values from 200 000 to 400 000 near 4.5 microns, with excess optical losses (scatter and absorption) below 5 ppm. In a first proof-of-concept demonstration, we achieve the lowest noise-equivalent absorption in a linear cavity ring-down spectrometer normalized by cavity length. This substantial improvement in performance will unlock a rich variety of MIR applications for atmospheric transport and environmental sciences, detection of fugitive emissions, process gas monitoring, breath-gas analysis, and verification of biogenic fuels and plastics.
Resources
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Fig4.xlsx |
https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3089/Fig4.xlsx |
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Fig3.xlsx |
https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3089/Fig3.xlsx |
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Fig5.xlsx |
https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3089/Fig5.xlsx |
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Fig2.xlsx |
https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3089/Fig2.xlsx |
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readme.txt |
https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3089/readme.txt |
Tags
- mid-infrared
- optical-metrology
- cavity-ring-down-spectroscopy
- mirrors
- process-gas-analysis
- optical-interference-coatings
- greenhouse-gases