Spectroscopic quantification of extremely rare molecular species in the presence of interfering optical absorption

US9645077B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignees

• Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC · US
• Picarro, Inc. · US

Inventors

• Ted Ognibene · Oakland, US
• Graham Bench · Livermore, US
• Alan Daniel McCartt · San Francisco, US
• Kenneth W. Turteltaub · Livermore, US
• Chris W. Rella · Sunnyvale, US
• Sze Meng Tan · Santa Clara, US
• John A. Hoffnagle · San Jose, US
• Nabil Saad · Menlo Park, US
• Eric R. Crosson · Mountain View, US

Key dates

• Filing date: May 18, 2015
• Grant date: May 9, 2017
• Expiry date: May 18, 2035

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01N2021/399
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

Optical spectrometer apparatus, systems, and methods for analysis of carbon-14 including a resonant optical cavity configured to accept a sample gas including carbon-14, an optical source configured to deliver optical radiation to the resonant optical cavity, an optical detector configured to detect optical radiation emitted from the resonant cavity and to provide a detector signal; and a processor configured to compute a carbon-14 concentration from the detector signal, wherein computing the carbon-14 concentration from the detector signal includes fitting a spectroscopic model to a measured spectrogram, wherein the spectroscopic model accounts for contributions from one or more interfering species that spectroscopically interfere with carbon-14.