Facilities and equipment
Our laser spectroscopy lab is located at the Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki.

Our laboratories are fully equipped for experimental research of high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. Below you can find a list of our major research instruments.

Virtual lab tour (360 video)

NT-MDT NTEGRA Raman/AFM/TERS microscope users: If you are familiar with the instrument and have used it before, please use Open IRIS to reserve instrument time (instructions below). If you are interested in getting access as a new user, please contact Markku Vainio (see Contact page).

Optical Frequency Comb (OFC) generators

  • Fully stabilized mode-locked Er-fiber comb (Menlo Systems FC1500-250-WG with M-NIR and P250 PM PULSE EDFA extensions. GPS-referenced)
  • High-power (10 W) mode-locked Yb-fiber laser (Menlo Systems Orange-Comb-250 + HIGH POWER 10)
  • High-power (> 0.5 W) fully stabilized mid-infrared comb that operates in the ~ 3 µm molecular fingerprint region. Fully developed and built by our team, based on simple CW-seeded optical parametric generation. APL Photonics 6, 026103 (2021)

CW laser instruments

  • High-power (0.5 to 5 W), narrow-linewidth (< 1MHz) CW-OPO that operate in the ~ 3 µm molecular fingerprint region. Developed and built by our team; see e.g. Opt. Express 16, 11141 (2008), Appl. Opt. 50, A1-A10 (2011), Opt. Express 18, 14087 (2010)
  • Widely tunable external-cavity diode laser, 1.5 µm region; (Toptica DLC CTL 1550)
  • Widely tunable external-cavity diode laser, 1.5 µm region; (New Focus Velocity 6328)
  • Widely tunable CW Ti:sapphire laser (MBR-PS) pumped by Coherent Verdi V18
  • Narrow-linewidth 1064 nm fiber lasers and DFB diode lasers
  • High-power (15 to 20 W) CW Yb-fiber amplifiers (IPG YAR-X-1064-LP-SF)
  • Quantum cascade lasers

Spectroscopy and microscopy instrumentation

  • High-resolution FTIR spectrometer (Bruker IFS 120HR)
  • NT-MDT NTEGRA Spectra II – AFM-Raman-TERS microscope (with 532 nm and 633 nm lasers)
  • Optical spectrum analyzers and wavelength meters (ANDO AQ6315E, Bristol Instruments 771B-MIR, EXFO WA-1500-NIR/IR-89)
  • Cantilever-enhanced PAS cells (Gasera PA201/301), cavity-ring-down spectrometers and multipass cells