Collinear FAST CARS for Chemical Mapping of Gases

Abstract

We examine the concentration dependence of the Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) signal obtained for gas mixtures at various conditions using the Femtosecond Adaptive Spectroscopic Technique (FAST). We use the CARS signal of the Q-branch vibrational oscillation of molecular oxygen (1556 cm−1) to confirm the quadratic dependence of the coherent signal on the number of molecules in a test volume. In addition, we demonstrate multi-shot FAST CARS imaging of a gas flow in free space by raster-scanning the area of interest.