A Lyot-type liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF) suitable for high-definition Raman chemical imaging has been developed. The LCTF has been incorporated into an efficient Raman imaging system that provides significant performance advantages relative to any previous approach to Raman microscopy. The LCTF and associated optical path is physically compact, which accommodates integration of the LCTF within an infinity-corrected optical microscope. The LCTF simultaneously provides diffraction-limited spatial resolution and 7.6-cm-1 spectral bandpass across the full free spectral range of the imaging spectrometer. The LCTF Raman microscope successfully integrates, in a facile manner, the utility of optical microscopy and the analytical capabilities of Raman spectroscopy. In this paper the LCTF Raman imaging system is described in detail, as well as results of initial studies of polymer and corrosion product model systems.
A laser heating system is described for use with diamond anvil high pressure cells that directly senses and stabilizes visible thermal radiation emitted by hot samples. This technique stabilizes sample temperatures better than other methods and allows superior temperature control. Calibration of the system was checked by measuring the melting temperatures of five metals at ambient pressure. Assuming literature values for spectral emissivity, the calibration was found to be accurate to 3.3% (based upon one standard deviation of the percentage error from published melting temperatures). Performance of the laser heating system was verified by heating iron foil at 13 GPa. With the sample intensity unstabilized, mean temperature was 3003 K with a standard deviation of 144 K, while with it stabilized, mean temperature was 3051 K with a standard deviation of 8 K. For a given wavelength-dependent emissivity, the difference between the actual temperature and the greybody temperature increases as the temperature increases. Therefore, to accurately determine temperatures at the high temperatures applicable to solid Earth geophysics (1500–6000 K), wavelength-dependent emissivity cannot be ignored.
An active cavity radiometer of the electrical substitution type with a cone receiver that operates at 2-4 K has been developed for measuring radiant fluxes in the dynamic range of 20 nW to 100 microW within an uncertainty of +/-1% (2sigmalevel). It is a broadband absolute detector with a flat overall absorption efficiency that is >99% for radiation from the visible to long-wavelength IR. The system is designed based on thermal modeling and experimental measurements of concepts. It has been installed in the cryogenic chamber for low-background infrared radiation calibrations at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for testing cryogenic blackbody sources, detectors, and optical components. Its time constant, responsivity, and nonequivalence error have been measured. They are in agreement with design predictions. Radiant power measurements of an amplitude-stabilized He-Ne laser beam with the radiometer and an industry standard photodiode detector, QED-200, have been intercompared and found to be in agreement. The intercomparison ratio of the measurements with the absolute cryogenic radiometer and QED-200 was 1.004 in the 75-100-microW range with an uncertainty of 0.5% (the 3sigma level).
The dramatic improvement in heat diffusivity of pure copper at liquid helium temperatures makes possible very important advances in the absolute accuracy, reproducibility, sensitivity, and time constant of cryogenic electrical substitution radiometers (ESRs), relative to conventional ESRs. The design and characterization of a table top cryogenic ESR now available for detector calibration work to the 0.01% level of absolute accuracy under laser illumination is discussed. A sensitive cryogenic ESR recently delivered to the NIST for radiometric calibrations of black bodies is also described, along with the design and testing of a very fast cryogenic ESR developed for NASA's remote sensing studies of the earth's radiation budget. Finally, the improvements that could be achieved in total and UV solar irradiance measurement using cryogenic ESRs are mentioned.
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