Lasers in the Analysis of Cultural Heritage Materials

This article reviews laser-based analytical techniques, which find applications in the field of cultural heritage diagnostics, providing information about the chemical composition of materials, at the atomic or molecular level. Lasers are intense sources of light featuring unique characteristics that have been exploited in order to enhance the performance of certain spectroscopic techniques such as Raman or fluorescence spectroscopy, or even produce new schemes of analysis, including, for instance, non-linear or remote sensing spectroscopy as well as laser ablative sampling and excitation. In parallel, with advances in laser and detector technology, compact, mobile instrumentation is becoming available that permits broader use of such laser-based techniques for analysis of materials in works of art and archaeological findings.