Absorption of low-loss optical materials measured at 1064 nm by a position-modulated collinear photothermal detection technique.

A collinear photothermal detection bench is described that makes use of a position-modulated heating source instead of the classic power-modulated source. This new modulation scheme increases by almost a factor 2 the sensitivity of a standard mirage bench. This bench is then used to measure the absorption coefficient of OH-free synthetic fused silica at 1064 nm in the parts per 10(6) range, which, combined with spectrophotometric measurements, confirms that the dominant absorption source is the OH content.