PHASE FLUCTUATION ABSORPTION SPECTROSCOPY OF SMALL PARTICLES (AEROSOL, OZONE, ISOPRENE, PINENE)

The purpose of this dissertation is to establish a viable mass measurement technique for in situ aerosol. Adaptation of the photothermal effect in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer provided high mass sensitivity in an instrument employing Phase Fluctuation Laser Optical Heterodyne (PFLOH) absorption spectroscopy. The theory of aerosol absorption of electromagnetic energy and subsequent thermalization in continuum, Rayleigh regime region is presented. From this theory the general behavior of PFLOH detection of aerosol is described and shown to give a signal proportional to the absorption species mass. Furthermore the signal is shown to be linear in excitation energy and modulation frequency, and scalable. The instrument is calibrated and shown to behave as predicted. PFLOH detection is then used in determining the mass size distribution of the aerosol component of the ozone-isoprene and ozone-(alpha)-pinene products as a function of isoprene and (alpha)-pinene concentration.