Note: A transient absorption spectrometer using an ultra bright laser-driven light source

An apparatus to measure transient absorption spectra for short-lived species in the gas phase was built. This was achieved by coupling a laser-driven plasma light source to a time-gated intensified-CCD spectrometer. Although the laser-driven light source features high brightness, ultra broad bandwidth and long lifetime, we found it possesses a plasma oscillation at a frequency of similar to 200 kHz with a peak-to-peak amplitude of similar to 7%. This oscillation caused significant variation of the baseline of the transient absorption spectra even after averaging. To reduce this problem, we synchronized the detector gate time with the phase of the plasma oscillation. This arrangement results in much greater stability of the spectral baseline. We have tested the performance of the whole system with the time-resolved absorption spectra of excited NO3 radicals produced by pulsed laser photolysis of N2O5. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.