HIGH-RESOLUTION FOURIER-TRANSFORM SPECTROSCOPY WITH PULSED LASER-INDUCED FLUORESCENCES

An investigation of the use of a commercial continuous scanning FT spectrometer to record high resolution laser induced fluorescence spectra excited with pulsed lasers is presented. Spectra have been recorded in the near IR and visible following excitation by a copper vapour laser (6 kHz), by a dye laser pumped with the copper laser and by a Q-switched Nd-YAG laser (6-20 kHz). The lasers were slaved to the sampling signal of the spectrometer. The technique has been successful with spacing between data interferogram points as low as 79.1 nm which, in principle, allows spectral characterisations without aliasing from 0 to 63192 cm-1. The extension of high resolution FT spectroscopy to embrace pulsed induced fluorescences seems very promising, as high peak power lasers make it possible to envisage multiphoton/multistep excitations, also to use UV tunable dye lasers from frequency doubling.