Optical saturation, diffusion and convection effects in thermal lens spectrometry

In thermal lens spectrometry (TLS) the intense pump radiation can lead the chromophore to partial optical saturation conditions in which the ground state is depleted and the population of an intermediate excited state increases. A model in which the excitation process competes with both the decay processes and diffusion and convection of the species in the excited and ground states is developed. The model is used to explain the variations of the TLS/spectrophotometry sensitivity ratios found for a series of phthalein and azo dyes in aqueous media.