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Mid-infrared supermirrors with finesse exceeding 400 000

Metadata Updated: September 30, 2025

Data from peer-reviewed publication: G.-W. Truong et al., Mid-infrared supermirrors with finesse exceeding 400 000, Nature Communications. For trace gas sensing and precision spectroscopy, optical cavities incorporating low-loss mirrors are indispensable for path length and optical intensity enhancement. Optical interference coatings in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) spectral regions have achieved total optical losses below 2 parts per million (ppm), enabling a cavity finesse in excess of 1 million. However, such advancements have been lacking in the mid-infrared (MIR), despite substantial scientific interest. Here, we demonstrate a significant breakthrough in high-performance MIR mirrors, reporting substrate-transferred single-crystal interference coatings capable of cavity finesse values from 200 000 to 400 000 near 4.5 microns, with excess optical losses (scatter and absorption) below 5 ppm. In a first proof-of-concept demonstration, we achieve the lowest noise-equivalent absorption in a linear cavity ring-down spectrometer normalized by cavity length. This substantial improvement in performance will unlock a rich variety of MIR applications for atmospheric transport and environmental sciences, detection of fugitive emissions, process gas monitoring, breath-gas analysis, and verification of biogenic fuels and plastics.

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Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

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References

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43367-z

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 30, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 30, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from Commerce Non Spatial Data.json Harvest Source

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 30, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 30, 2025
Publisher National Institute of Standards and Technology
Maintainer
Identifier ark:/88434/mds2-3089
Data First Published 2023-11-07
Language en
Data Last Modified 2023-10-03 00:00:00
Category Environment:Greenhouse gas measurements, Chemistry:Analytical chemistry, Physics:Spectroscopy, Physics:Optical physics, Metrology:Optical, photometry, and laser metrology
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 006:55
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id de6864b7-65e0-4398-8441-fc4430a1b11d
Harvest Source Id bce99b55-29c1-47be-b214-b8e71e9180b1
Harvest Source Title Commerce Non Spatial Data.json Harvest Source
Homepage URL https://data.nist.gov/od/id/mds2-3089
License https://www.nist.gov/open/license
Program Code 006:045
Related Documents https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43367-z
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 4ef0ecf444ebf683a10116a2a49ac858ace8ba6dec896375cc3f051f70f2df90
Source Schema Version 1.1

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