Dual-beam wavelength modulation spectroscopy for sensitive detection of water vapor

A technique was reported for sensitive detection of water vapor based on dual-beam wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS). Particular attention was focused on the problem of laser power variation (LPV) and residual amplitude modulation (RAM), which accounted for the absorption profile's distortion during application of WMS. Impact from LPV and RAM was eliminated by photocurrent normalization through a balanced ratiometric detector, which was a dual-beam technique with shot noise-level performance. When consideration of distortion was required, this could enormously simplify the spectra analysis procedure. In the experiment symmetry of the WMS, profile had gotten an improvement by a factor of about 102 compared with traditional single-beam method. During the application test of water vapor detection, the detected amplitude of WMS was well proportional to water vapor concentration ranging from 25 to 1,048 ppmv and the sensitivity was achieved to be 52 ppbv for just a 10-cm optical path length.