Optical-parametric-amplification-enhanced background-free spectroscopy

• Mingchen Liu, Robert Gray, Arkadev Roy, Luis Ledezma, and Alireza Marandi
• received 02/15/2024; accepted 04/18/2024; posted 04/19/2024; Doc. ID 520848
• Abstract: Traditional absorption spectroscopy has fundamental difficulty in resolving small absorbance from strong background due to the instability of laser sources. Existing background-free methods in broadband vibrational spectroscopy help to alleviate this problem but face challenges in realizing either low extinction ratios or time-resolved field measurements. Here, we introduce optical-parametric-amplification-enhanced background-free spectroscopy, in which the excitation background is first suppressed by an interferometer and then the free-induction decay that carries molecular signatures is selectively amplified. We show that this method can improve the limit of detection in linear interferometry by order(s) of magnitude without requiring lower extinction ratios or time-resolved measurement, which can benefit sensing applications in detecting trace species.