Towards Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Trace Gases in the UV spectral range using Dual-Comb spectroscopy

The development of increasingly sensitive and robust instruments and new methodologies are essential to improve our understanding of the Earth’s climate and air pollution. In this context, Dual-Comb spectroscopy (DCS) appears as an emerging spectroscopy methodology to detect in situ, without air-sampling, atmospheric trace-gases.

DCS is a Fourier-transform type experiment that takes advantage of mode-locked femtosecond (fs) pulses. This methodology appears highly relevant for atmosphere remote-sensing studies because of its very fast acquisition rate (>kHz) that reduces the impact of atmospheric turbulences on the retrieved spectra. DCS has been successfully applied in near-infrared (NIR) spectral ranges for atmospheric greenhouse gas monitoring (water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) [1-2].

Its implementation in the UV range would offer a new spectroscopic intrumentation to target the most reactive species of the atmosphere (OH, HONO, BrO...) as they have their greatest absorption cross-sections in the UV range. UV-DCS would therefore be an answer to the lack of variability of today operationnal and in situ monitoring instrument for those reactive molecules.

We will present a potential light source for remote sensing UV-DCS and discuss the degree of immunity of UV-DCS to atmospheric turbulences. We will show to which extent the characteristics of the currently available UV sources are compatible with the unambiguous identification of UV absorbing gases by UV-DCS. We will finally present the performances of UV-DCS in terms of concentration detection limit for several UV absorbing molecules (OH, BrO, NO₂, OClO, HONO, CH₂O, SO₂). This sensitivity study has been recently published [3] and the main results will be presented.

 

[1] Rieker, G.B.; Giorgetta, F.R.; Swann, W.C.; Kofler, J.; Zolot, A.M.; Sinclair, L.C.; Baumann, E.; Cromer, C.;Petron, G.; Sweeney, C.; et al. « Frequency-comb-based remote sensing of greenhouse gases over kilometer air Paths ». Optica 1, p. 290–298 (2014)

[2] Oudin, J.; Mohamed, A.K.; Hébert, P.J. "IPDA LIDAR measurements on atmospheric CO2 and H2O using dual comb spectroscopy," Proc. SPIE 11180, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2018, p. 111802N (12 July 2019)

[3] Galtier, S.; Pivard, C.; Rairoux, P. Towards DCS in the UV Spectral Range for Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Trace Gases. Remote Sens., 12, p.3444 (2020)