R&D Success Stories / An Ozone DIAL Transmitter Module for Airborne Applications

An Ozone DIAL Transmitter Module for Airborne Applications

The purpose of the project is the design and development of a compact and powerful tunable ultraviolet laser to serve as a transmitter module for autonomous lidar mounted on an airborne vehicle. The lidar provides measurements of ozone distributions in stratosphere and troposphere, which is critically important for protection of the Earth from harmful Sun’s ultraviolet radiation and concentrated photochemical smog. In addition to that, the lidar is applicable for fluorescence excitation of biological matter and detection on this base of different biological agents. The sponsor of this project is the NASA Langley Research Center.

Here, a Ce;LiCAF tunable UV laser has been chosen for lidar transmitter. It is capable of delivering ~ 1mJ /pulse energy at 1 kHz and has a tuning range over 280nm – 310nm. An oscillating rear mirror, synchronized with the sequence of pump pulses, makes available the switching between on- and off-line wavelengths in every laser pulse. The laser is packaged into a rugged, compact box for easy operation on an airborne vehicle.

The Ozone Lidar operation is based on a two-wavelength differential absorption technique in the UV. The ozone absorption exhibits a smooth band structure, the separation between the on- and off-line wavelengths is required to be a few nanometers.

The growing demand of environment monitoring lightweight and reliable airborne laser lidars conforming to the constrains of the small aircraft, makes the development of the compact commercial sample of the UV tunable laser as a next step in the development of a basic UV environmental sensor for climate research as well as for biological agent sensing.