Heterodyne phase-sensitive detection for calibration-free molecular dispersion spectroscopy

In this paper, a technique for molecular dispersion spectroscopy based on heterodyne phase-sensitive detection is presented. The method offers immunity to fluctuations of the received optical power and an output linearly dependent of the gas concentration. Besides this, an analytical model for the propagation of light in gaseous samples has been developed enabling calibration-free operation. The proposed architecture has been tested and experimentally validated using methane as target gas. (C)2014 Optical Society of America