Measurement of Rayleigh-Brillouin spectra in gas flows

Laser Rayleigh-Brillouin scattering is an effective non-intrusive method for measurement of density, temperature and pressure in gas flows. In theory, the power of Rayleigh-Brillouin scattered laser light is proportional to the gas density, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the Brillouin shift of the Rayleigh-Brillouin scattering spectrum is related to the gas temperature and pressure, respectively. In this paper, a measurement device based on Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) is designed to measure the Rayleigh-Brillouin spectrum of nitrogen gas. The experimental data is obtained at different pressures under room temperature conditions. The L3 model is used to fit the experimental data to obtain the FWHMs and Brillouin shifts of the Rayleigh-Brillouin profiles. The composite Rayleigh-Brillouin profiles which consist of Rayleigh peak, stokes peak and anti-stokes peak are represented by three distinct peaks of Lorentz functions. Fitting results show that the error of FWHMs and Brillouin shifts obtained by L3 model is less than 10% compare with the Tenti S6 model. Some factors that affect the measurement accuracy of the Rayleigh-Brillouin parameters are also analyzed and discussed.