AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Mineral Dust Produces Visible Laser Induced Incandescence
TINGTING CAO, Lulu Ma, Jonathan E. Thompson, Texas Tech University
Abstract Number: 295 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Laser-induced incandescence (LII) is a real-time measurement technique for in-situ measurement of black carbon particles (a.k.a. soot). When using LII, the soot within the laser beam is rapidly heated to several thousand Kelvin yielding an incandescence signal. Here, we demonstrate that two types of light-absorbing mineral dusts also emit visible light when illuminated by a 1064 nano-meter Nd:YAG laser beam. The emission presents itself as incandescence, featuring a broad emission spectrum similar to a blackbody at about 4300 K. The emission also exhibited microsecond lifetimes typical of incandescence. Lasing the mineral dust was found to produce alteration of the particle size distributions observed.