Emission spectroscopy from optically thick laboratory acetylene samples at high temperature

Recently, a high temperature source has been used to produce high temperature emission spectra of acetylene in the 3 μm spectral range, under Doppler limited resolution, and the complete spectral assignment has been performed using a global rovibrational Hamiltonian [Amyay B, Robert S, Herman M, Fayt A, Raghavendra B, Moudens A et al. Vibration-rotation pattern in acetylene (II): Introduction to Coriolis coupling in the global model and analysis of emission spectra of hot acetylene around 3 μm. J Chem Phys 2009;131:114301]. The present investigation focuses on the relative emission line intensities which are observed to be affected. The strongest lines intensity may be considerably reduced for high column density acetylene samples, hence affecting the 3:1 ortho:para intensity ratio. A radiative model is developed to take into account the effects generated by the strong opacity of the acetylene samples including self-absorption and absorption of the radiation emitted by the hot environment. The model is used to extract the absolute concentration of the high temperature acetylene samples from the observed relative spectral intensities. The relevance of the procedure for infrared remote sensing in high temperature astrophysical environments, such as circumstellar envelopes of cool carbon rich evolved stars, is discussed.

Research highlights► High temperature emission spectra of acetylene have been recorded near 3 μm. ► Optical thickness leads to an ortho/para alteration intensity. ► The o/p intensity ratio is used to measure the absolute concentration of acetylene. ► The method is relevant to the column-density determination of cool star atmospheres.