Absolute Raman cross-sections of some explosives: Trend to UV

The Raman cross-section dependence on excitation energy in spectral range 620–248 nm have been investigated for UN, TATP, RDX, TNT, and PETN explosives. For all investigated explosive materials, significant pre-resonance enhancement in the UV spectral range has been revealed. Normalized Raman scattering signals are 100–200 times stronger with UV excitation at 248 nm compared to visible excitation at 532 nm. Thus the gated Raman technique with UV excitation has significant advantages compared to IR–VIS excitation for the remote detection of explosives. Certain of the observed Raman lines exhibit deviations from classical λ−4 dependence of Raman cross-section and may totally disappear with UV excitation. The possible explanation for this may be that numerous electronic transitions contribute to the molecular polarizability. These contributions could be of opposite sign and lead to partial cancellation of certain transitions. Another possible reason could be that this is a result of the stronger UV absorption that reduces the sampling volume and therefore the number of scatterers that produce the Raman signal.