Background
The atmosphere research group at IUP Heidelberg develops instruments to study the composition of the atmosphere. CO2 is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and quantifying the emissions of various sources is of special interest. Among other instruments, the research group started developing a CO2 camera to visualize and quantify CO2 emissions. The camera is based on a Fabry-Pérot interferometer (FPI) with a transmission pattern correlating with the spectral absorption structure of CO2.
Work Content
So far, a prototype instrument has been developed which successfully detects CO2 in lab measurements. The proposed master's thesis will continue this work. The prototype requires further development and automatization to be ready for field deployment. For this, you will perform instrument simulations and work on the prototype in the laboratory. Depending on the progress you may also perform field measurements at a nearbycoal-fired power plant and work on the data analysis.
Prerequisites
Interest in performing instrument simulations and working in the lab on an optical setup is necessary. Knowledge of lectures in environmental physics, ideally atmospheric physics and radiative transfer is preferable.