A high-sensitivity photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy (PAS) system is proposed for dual enhancement from both PA signal excitation and detection by employing a miniaturized Herriott cell and a fiber-optic microphone (FOM). The length of the optical absorption path of the PA cell is optimized to ∼374 mm with 17 reflections. The volume of the PA cell is only 622 µL. The FOM is a low-finesse fiber-optic Fabry-Pérot (FP) interferometer. The two reflectors of the FP cavity are formed by a fiber endface and a circular titanium diaphragm with a radius of 4.5 mm and a thickness of 3 µm. A fast demodulated white-light interferometer (WLI) is utilized to measure the absolute FP cavity length. The acoustic responsivity of the FOM reaches 126.6 nm/Pa. Several representative PA signals of trace acetylene (C2H2) are detected to evaluate the performance of the trace gas detector in the near-infrared region. Experimental results show that the minimum detectable pressure (MDP) of the FOM is 3.8 µPa/Hz1/2 at 110 Hz. The noise equivalent minimum detection concentration is measured to be 8.4 ppb with an integration time of 100 s. The normalized noise equivalent absorption (NNEA) coefficient is calculated as 1.4×10−9 cm−1·W·Hz−1/2.

A Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometric fiber-optic cantilever sensor is presented for simultaneous measurement of acoustic pressure and temperature, which are demodulated by a single high-speed spectrometer. The acoustic pressure wave pushes the cantilever to produce periodic deflection, while the temperature deforms the sensor and causes the F-P cavity length to change slowly. The absolute length of the F-P cavity of the fiber-optic cantilever sensor is calculated rapidly by using a spectral demodulation method. The acoustic pressure and temperature are obtained by high-pass filtering and averaging the continuously measured absolute cavity length value, respectively. The experimental results show that the acoustic pressure can be detected with an ultra-high sensitivity of 198.3 nm/Pa at 1 kHz. In addition, an increase in temperature reduces the resonant frequency of the acoustic response and increases the static F-P cavity length. The temperature coefficient of the resonance frequency shift and the temperature response of the sensor are -0.49 Hz/°C and 83 nm/°C, respectively. Furthermore, through temperature compensation, the measurement error of acoustic pressure reaches ± 3%. The proposed dual parameter measurement scheme greatly simplifies the system structure and reduces the system cost.

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