Reconstruction of Refractive Indices from Spectral Measurements of Monodisperse Aerosols

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the FASP device can accurately measure the refractive indices of monodisperse aerosols under varying environmental conditions, essential for studying two-component aerosols.

Contribution

It shows the capability of the FASP device to measure refractive indices of pure aerosol components and analyzes measurement accuracy requirements.

Findings

FASP device effectively measures refractive indices under rigid conditions.

Determined particle radii necessary for accurate measurements.

Identified measurement accuracy thresholds for reliable refractive index retrieval.

Abstract

For the investigation of two-component aerosols one needs to know the refractive indices of the two aerosol components. One problem is that they depend on temparature and pressure, so one needs for their determination a robust measurement instrument such as the FASP device, which can cope with rigid environmental conditions. In this article we show that the FASP device is capable of measuring the needed refractive indices, if monodisperse aerosols of the pure components are provided. We determine the particle radii of the monodisperse aerosols needed for this task and investigate how accurate the measurements have to be in order to retrieve refractive indices in a sufficient quality, such that they are suitable for investigations of two-component aerosols.