Uncertainty of Integrated Intensity Following Line Profile Fitting of Multiline Spectra

Appl Spectrosc. 2018 May;72(5):787-792. doi: 10.1177/0003702818756652. Epub 2018 Feb 21.

Abstract

A novel method of determining the total uncertainty in the integrated intensity of fitted emission lines in multipeaked emission spectra is presented. The proposed method does not require an assumption of the type of line profile to be specified. The absolute difference between a fit and measured spectrum defines the uncertainty of the integrated signal intensity and is subsequently decomposed to determine the uncertainty of each peak in multiline fits. Decomposition relies on tabulating a weighting factor, which describes how each peak contributes to the total integral uncertainty. Applications of this method to quantitative approaches in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy analysis are described.

Keywords: LIBS; Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy; atomic spectroscopy; fitting; uncertainties.