Sub-part-per-trillion level detection of hydrogen fluoride by cantilever-enhanced photo-acoustic spectroscopy

We present a highly sensitive hydrogen fluoride detector based on simple cantilever-enhanced photo-acoustic spectroscopy. A noise equivalent concentration of 5 parts-per-trillion was achieved in 1 s and 650 parts-per-quadrillion in 32 min. The limits were reached with an average optical power of 950 mW using a new continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator at 2.476 \mu m. The achieved normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient was 2.7$\times$10$^{-10}$ Wcm$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1/2}$.