Time-Domain Spectroscopy for Space Exploration at Terahertz energy scales

Abstract

In recent years, short pulse lasers have made massive progress and space-ready femtosecond laser systems are under development [1]. Moreover, employing time-domain spectroscopy techniques to identify planetary minerals by their spectroscopic fingerprints in the infrared and terahertz frequency range can have technological advantages over conventional spectroscopic techniques such as Fourier-Transform Infrared or Raman spectroscopy. The advantages are compactness, the possibility to replace bulky optical components by electro-optic/acousto-optic photonic techniques and the potential to be chip-integrable. We focus on one particular time-domain technique, coherent phonon spectroscopy (CPS), which is sensitive to Raman-active modes. Here, CPS is demonstrated in single-color operation and thus the simplicity and its insensitivity to fluorescence background add to the advantages of this technique.