Frequency Comb-Referenced Spectroscopy in the ν₁ +ν₃ Region of Acetylene

By using saturation dip absorption spectroscopy with an extended cavity diode laser locked to a frequency comb, we have measured the rest frequencies of transitions in the ν₄ = 1 and ν₅ = 1 hot bands in the ν₁ + ν₃ combination band of acetylene. The measured line frequencies are accurate to approximately 20 kHz i.e. approximately one part in 10¹¹. Positions of the hot-band lines quoted in the HITRAN database, which are derived from the analysis of high-resolution FTIR spectra, are of the order of 10’s of MHz in error. These measurements were undertaken because pressure broadened lineshape measurements of rotational lines in the combination band indicated that weak underlying hot band features were not correctly accounted for on the basis of their previously reported positions. As a result, measured line profiles in the band could not be accurately fit leading to errors of up to 1% in acetylene concentrations derived from the measurements. In addition, the pressure broadened P(11) line in the ν₁ + ν₃ combination band has been studied as a function of varying concentration of the absorber in nitrogen. Mixture concentrations of 1, 5 and 10% at 296 K and pressures between a few Torr and one atmosphere were made and the measurements analyzed using two different speeddependent broadening models. These experiments are designed to test the additivity of contributions to pressure broadening and shift in speed-dependent line-shape modeling, i.e. whether the lineshape parameters follow partial pressure weighting in the binary mixtures. P(11) is relatively isolated with respect to underlying hot band transitions and neighboring transitions of the same band, but it was found that the accurate positions of underlying hot-band transitions were crucial to the successful modeling of the observed line shapes, even though these lines are typically 100-1000 times weaker than P(11) itself and are many Doppler line widths removed from the line center.

Acknowledgments: Work at Brookhaven National Laboratory was carried out under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy and supported by its Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences.