Abstract
We report an investigation of high-resolution, infrared degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM)in the v3 fundamental baud of methane. Our objective is to test the ability of simple DFWM models to reproduce the signals generated from rovibrational transitions. Specifically, we test their ability to describe the line shape dependence on foreign gas pressure and the profiles of overlapping transitions characteristic of infrared spectra of polyatomic molecules. In contrast to the more widely studied case of DFWM in excited electronic states, DFWM in excited vibrational states is potentially simpler to model and a better test of the available theories for two primary reasons. First quenching effects are largely unimportant in v = 1 excited vibrational states, and second thermal grating effects should be greatly reduced since less than one-tenth the energy is deposited in each molecule for a typical vibrational versus electronic excitation. Measurements are performed on methane in a static cell with a single frequency (0.007 cm-1 bandwidth), continuously tunable laser system consisting of an optical parametric oscillator followed by two optical parametric amplifier stages.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
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