ABSTRACT
Advances in spectroscopy have the potential to improve our understanding of agricultural processes and associated trace gas emissions. We implement field-deployed, open-path dual-comb spectroscopy (DCS) for precise multispecies emissions estimation from livestock. With broad atmospheric dual-comb spectra, we interrogate upwind and downwind paths from pens containing approximately 300 head of cattle, providing time-resolved concentration enhancements and fluxes of CH4, NH3, CO2, and H2O. The methane fluxes determined from DCS data and fluxes obtained with a colocated closed-path cavity ring-down spectroscopy gas analyzer agree to within 6%. The NH3 concentration retrievals have sensitivity of 10 parts per billion and yield corresponding NH3 fluxes with a statistical precision of 8% and low systematic uncertainty. Open-path DCS offers accurate multispecies agricultural gas flux quantification without external calibration and is easily extended to larger agricultural systems where point-sampling-based approaches are insufficient, presenting opportunities for field-scale biogeochemical studies and ecological monitoring.
ABSTRACT
We report on a compact and transportable apparatus that consists of a cold atomic target at the center of a high resolution recoil ion momentum spectrometer. Cold rubidium atoms serve as a target which can be operated in three different modes: in continuous mode, consisting of a cold atom beam generated by a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap, in normal mode in which the atoms from the beam are trapped in a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (3D MOT), and in high density mode in which the 3D MOT is operated in dark spontaneous optical trap configuration. The targets are characterized using photoionization.
