Evaluating the Accuracy of Absorbing Aerosol Optical Properties Measured using Single Particle Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy

Single particle cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) allows direct and continuous measurements of the extinction cross-sections for levitated micron-scale aerosol particles of constant or evolving composition. Our recent interests have concerned single particle CRDS measurements for light-absorbing particles. These measurements are made on single, spherical particles evaporating over the radius range 1500-700 nm, that are levitated within a 405-nm cavity ring-down spectrometer using a linear electrodynamic quadrupole trap. Here, we quantify the accuracy and precision of our cavity ring-down time measurements and the consequences of particle motion within our electrodynamic trap. Next, we estimate the uncertainty in our particle size retrievals from angularly resolved elastic light scattering measurements for particles with a range of absorption strengths. Finally, we assess the accuracy of complex refractive index values retrieved from simultaneous ring-down time and particle size measurements. The assessments account for the impacts of shot and detector noise in the measured ring-down times, the driven particle motion within the electrodynamic trap, and particle absorption strength (for imaginary refractive indices in the range ~0.0–0.1). The real and imaginary refractive indices are retrieved to an accuracy better than 0.005 and 0.002, respectively, for almost all absorption strengths studied, and for particles of constant or evolving composition. Although particles confined in our electrodynamic quadrupole trap undergo considerable levels of driven motion (with oscillation amplitudes of several tens of micrometers), the contribution of this motion to uncertainty in retrieved refractive indices is negligible compared to contributions from particle sizing errors.