Laser ablation spectrometry apparatus

An apparatus for ablation spectroscopy, comprising:

• a pulsed laser configured to ablate material from a sample into an emissive plasma plume with a laser pulse;
• a plurality of spectrometers, each having a wavelength separating element and a detector;
• and
• a branched fiber optic lightguide having an entire bundle of optical fibers in a trunk section of the fiber optic lightguide adjoining a light receiving end of the trunk configured to collect light originating from the emissive plasma plume, the entire bundle of optical fibers in the trunk section being subdivided into a plurality of branches, each branch comprising a respective exclusive subset of the entire bundle of optical fibers, whereby each optical fiber in the exclusive subset of the entire bundle in a branch runs from the light receiving trunk end of the branched fiber optic lightguide to a terminal end of said branch;
• wherein:
• a terminal end of a first branch of a branched fiber optic lightguide is configured to emit a first portion of the collected light into a first spectrometer, and a terminal end of a second branch of the branched fiber optic lightguide is configured to emit a second portion of the collected light into a second spectrometer;
• and
• the computer is configured to receive spectral data comprising first spectral data from the first spectrometer and second spectral data from the second spectrometer, and the computer includes tangible media comprising instructions and data operable to determine a representation of the sample composition based on the spectral data.