Selective reflection of light at a solid-gas interface and its application

In order to study the detailed spectral intensity distribution of light reflected from a solid-gas interface, the extinction theorem in optics is extended to include an absorbing medium and the thermal motion of the gas molecules near the interface. The theoretical spectral intensity distribution in...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Takeda, Fumihide
Format: Others
Published: PDXScholar 1980
Subjects:
Online Access:https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/838
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1837&context=open_access_etds
Description
Summary:In order to study the detailed spectral intensity distribution of light reflected from a solid-gas interface, the extinction theorem in optics is extended to include an absorbing medium and the thermal motion of the gas molecules near the interface. The theoretical spectral intensity distribution in the region of anomalous dispersion is found to be strongly modified compared to that predicted by existing theory. An important consequence of this theory in the line shapes of the reflected light is the possibility of using recently developed saturation spectroscopic techniques to study atoms and molecules near surfaces. In order to investigate the feasibility of these new techniques for obtaining solid-gas molecule interaction potentials, models of solid-gas interfaces were studied with and without interactions of the type 1/zP (p = 2,3,4), where z is the distance between gas molecules and solid surface. A marked difference in the line shapes of the reflected light among the possible interactions suggests that the forms of interaction at the interface can be measured using known techniques. Furthermore, the possibility of measuring the flow of gas near walls where currently available laser-Doppler anemometers can not spatially reach is investigated. It is shown that the shift and width of the numerically calculated line shape of the reflected light in our model flow is directly related to the mean and the fluctuating velocity fields respectively.