Temporally modulating laser pulses to stabilize LIBS measurement locations under large gas temperature gradients

In combustion research, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been widely employed in local equivalence ratio measurement. However, the potential temperature gradients in the probe volume can significantly affect the shape of induced plasmas, resulting in unstable measurement locations. In this work, we improved the stability of measurement locations by modulating the laser pulse duration. In a hot-cold gas flow interface with large temperature gradients, when using the original laser pulse with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 4 ns, the locations of initial plasma core were insensitive to gradient variations; however, the plasma expansion behaviors differed significantly after 3 ns. The hot spots of plasmas diverged bi-directionally under high temperature, resulting in two-lobe structures and unstable measurement locations. After the laser pulse was modulated to a shorter duration using a pressure chamber, the plasma expansion was suppressed which constrained the plasma volume. Specifically, using a modulated pulse with a FWHM of 1.9 ns, the two-lobe structure was eliminated across the interface, and the standard deviation of measurement locations was reduced to 0.27 mm. The measured equivalence ratios across the interface showed favorable agreement with the simulation.