Exploring optical properties of snow using broadband time-domain diffuse optical spectroscopy

We present a preliminary study of light propagation in snow using broadband, time-domain diffuse optical spectroscopy (TD-DOS) – which is based on the detection of the distribution of Time-of-Flight (ToF) of photons traveling into the sample. By performing broadband measurements in the range of 600 – 1100 nm on artificially prepared snow phantoms, we retrieve the absorption spectrum with the distinct peak of ice observed at 1030 nm. Consequently, we measure samples with added coloured contaminants and attempt to characterize their absorption when frozen along with the snow. Finally, we attempted to distinguish phantoms with different snowpack density using changes in reduced scattering coefficients.