On the parametrization of optical particle counter response including instrument-induced broadening of size spectra and a self-consistent evaluation of calibration measurements

Kurzfassung

We present a new approach to model the response of optical particle counters (OPCs) including a simple parametrization for artificial broadening of size spectra induced by the non-ideal behavior of real OPCs. We show a self-consistent way to evaluate calibration measurements and outline how particle number size distributions with realistic uncertainty estimates can be derived. The innovations will improve the accuracy of OPC-derived size distributions and allow to assess their precision.