Diagnostic Imaging in Flames with Instantaneous Planar Coherent Raman Spectroscopy

Spatial mapping of temperature and molecular species concentrations is vitally important in studies of gaseous chemically reacting flows. Temperature marks the evolution of heat release and energy transfer, while species concentration gradients provide critical information on mixing and chemical reaction. Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) was pioneered in measurements of such processes almost 40 years ago and is authoritative in terms of the accuracy and precision it may provide. While a reacting flow is fully characterized in three-dimensional space, a limitation of CARS has been its applicability as a point-wise measurement technique, motivating advancement toward CARS imaging, and attempts have been made considering one-dimensional probing. Here, we report development of two-dimensional CARS, with the first diagnostics of a planar field in a combusting flow within a single laser pulse, resulting in measured isotherms ranging from 450 K up to typical hydrocarbon flame temperatures of about 2000 K with chemical mapping of O2 and N2.