Abstract. Using a specially designed excimer-laser-pumped dye laser of adjustable bandwidth high-lying pure rotational transitions of both, ortho-and para-hydrogen have been identified by coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS). As an interesting application Hz-based CARS-thermometry is discussed.
PACS: 42.65Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) using rotational-vibrational transitions has proven to be a powerful tool in various areas of science and technology since its first demonstration by Maker and Terhune [1]. Use of pure rotational transitions, however, has been made so far only in a few applications dealing with concentration and temperature measurements of small molecules, such as Hz, N2, 02, N20, and CO [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that pure rotational CARS spectroscopy in the vibronic groundstate of molecular hydrogen is a very powerful tool for the detection of small concentrations of H2, which can be utilized effectively for temperature measurements in various temperature ranges. The principal difference in terms of energy levels used for rotational and vibrational CARS of hydrogen can be explained with reference to Fig. 1, showing the typical scattering processes taking place in a CARStype experiment. The striking difference between vibrational and rotational CARS is the energy difference between the respective resonantly excited real levels, such as AEvi b for the v=0~v= 1 transition and AEro t for the J = 1 --*J = 3 transition, which turned out to be the most intense rotational transition for H 2 trace analysis under room temperature conditions. The limits of detectibility will be discussed in detail in Sect. 2.