Wind velocity, water vapor, and temperature measurements from space using 2-μm Tm:Ho;YAG laser

Abstract

Ir-i meteorological and climatological fields, the scientific community will increasingly need globalmeasurements of key atmospheric parameters with high spatial resolution (horizontal as well as vertical) : the spaceborne lidars are the most suitable instruments for those missions. Ihile backscatter lidar (ATLID, currently studied at ESA) is presently first candidate for space deployment, the next generation of lidars will be DIAL and Doppler wind lidars, presenting a higher level of complexity, mainly due to the large power and complex signal processing required. The present considered wind lidars are based on CO2 lasers, whose space compliance still needs confirmation, while alexandrite lasers are considered for water vapor and temperature measurements, but they need flashlamp pumping which poses a lot of severe thermal constraints and lifetime problems: on the other side, the recent developments achieved in solid-state technology allow to envisage diode pumping as most promising possibility for both previous applications. O-8194-1513-8/94/$6.OO SPIE VoL 2209 / 103 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/25/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx

A diode pumped tunable single-frequency Tm:YAG laser using twisted-mode technique

“…The 2 μm solid state lasers have important .applications in laser medicine, nonlinear optics, remote sensing and laser radar systems [1][2][3][4]. In the coherent laser radar systems, a single-frequency 2 μm solid state laser is required [4]. Some techniques have been used to obtain singlefrequency lasers, such as microchip lasers [5][6][7], nonplanar ring oscillators (NPRO) [8], lasers inserted with etalon [9,10] and twisted-mode lasers [11][12][13][14].…”

“…Diode pumped solid state lasers operating near 2 µm have attracted a lot of interests due to their eye-safe characteristics. The 2 µm solid state lasers have important .applications in laser medicine, nonlinear optics, remote sensing and laser radar systems [1][2][3][4]. In the coherent laser radar systems, a single-frequency 2 µm solid state laser is required [4].…”

“…The 2 µm solid state lasers have important .applications in laser medicine, nonlinear optics, remote sensing and laser radar systems [1][2][3][4]. In the coherent laser radar systems, a single-frequency 2 µm solid state laser is required [4].…”