The United States of America As Represented by the United States

Stephen C Schmidt

David S Moore

A method and an apparatus for conducting coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering spectroscopy in shock-compressed materials are disclosed. The apparatus includes a sample vessel having an optically transparent wall and an opposing optically reflective wall. Two coherent laser beams, a pump beam and a broadband Stokes beam, are directed through the window and focused on a portion of the sample. In the preferred embodiment, a projectile is fired from a high-pressure gas gun to impact the outside of the reflective wall, generating a planar shock wave which travels through the sample toward the window. The pump and Stokes beams result in the emission from the shock-compressed sample of a coherent anti-Stokes beam, which is emitted toward the approaching reflective wall of the vessel and reflected back through the window. The anti-Stokes beam is folded into a spectrometer for frequency analysis. The results of such analysis are useful for determining chemical and physical phenomena which occur during the shock-compression of the sample.

Method and apparatus for determining pressure-induced frequency-shifts

A method for determining molecular vibrational frequencies in shock-compressed transparent materials. A single laser beam pulse is directed into a sample material while the material is shock-compressed from a direction opposite that of the incident laser beam. A Stokes beam produced by stimulated Raman scattering is emitted back along the path of the incident laser beam, that is, in the opposite direction to that of the incident laser beam. The Stokes beam is separated from the incident beam and its frequency measured. The difference in frequency between the Stokes beam and the incident beam is representative of the characteristic frequency of the Raman active mode of the sample. Both the incident beam and the Stokes beam pass perpendicularly through the shock front advancing through the sample, thereby minimizing adverse effects of refraction.

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Los Alamos, NM, United States of America

Stephen C Schmidt