Molecular Spectroscopy
The exhaled breath is a rich source of information about the inner life of the human body - but untangling this complicated molecular mixture into a quantitative measurement of its constituent components is currently an unsolved problem.
We are developing a new instrument that leverages the Nobel Prize-winning technology of the optical frequency comb to enable the analysis of such mixtures.听The optical frequency comb is essentially a massively parallel laser source with millions of individual laser signals equally spaced across the optical spectrum. By combining a frequency comb source with an innovative parallel detector and a highly sensitive sampling system, we can generate a real-time spectral signature of the sample. 听Computational techniques developed by the radio astronomy community will then be used to extract concentrations of individual molecular components at the parts-per-billion level.
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The principle of optical absorption spectroscopy. The characteristic molecular absorption of the sample is imprinted onto the transmitted light, which is converted by the spectrometer into an absorption spectrum.
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