High intensity laser light source
Raman Scattering from HORIBA is based on an incident light scattered by a molecule from a high intensity laser light source. Most of the scattered light is at the same wavelength (or color) as the laser source and does not provide useful information – The Rayleigh Scatter. However a small amount of light (typically 0.0000001%) is scattered at different wavelengths (or colors), which depend on the chemical structure of the analyte – this is called Raman Scatter.