Diode laser transmitter for water vapor DIAL measurements

Author

Repasky, Kevin S. ; Shaw, Joseph A. ; Carlsten, John L. ; Obland, Michael D. ; Meng, Lei S. ; Hoffman, David S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys. & Electr. Eng., Montana State Univ., Bozeman, MT, USA

Volume

3

fYear

2004

fDate

20-24 Sept. 2004

Firstpage

1947

Abstract

The design and performance of two diode laser based transmitters for differential absorption LIDAR (DIAL) are presented. The first laser transmitter uses a tunable external cavity diode laser (ECDL) in the Littman-Metcalf cavity configuration to injection seed a flared amplifier. Water vapor absorption measurements are demonstrated with this laser transmitter operating in a continuous wave mode. The second diode based laser transmitter uses an ECDL in the Littrow cavity configuration and angle-angle semiconductor optical amplifiers to produce amplified laser pulses. Both designs are easily adaptable to wavelengths in the visible to the near infrared spectral region.

Keywords

CW radar; atmospheric humidity; atmospheric measuring apparatus; atmospheric techniques; laser cavity resonators; optical radar; optical transmitters; radar transmitters; remote sensing by laser beam; semiconductor optical amplifiers; ECDL; Littman-Metcalf cavity configuration; Littrow cavity configuration; amplified laser pulses; angle-angle semiconductor optical amplifiers; continuous wave mode operation; differential absorption LIDAR; diode laser transmitter; flared amplifier; near infrared spectral region; tunable external cavity diode laser; visible spectral region; water vapor DIAL measurements; water vapor absorption measurements; Absorption; Diode lasers; Laser modes; Laser radar; Optical design; Optical transmitters; Pulse amplifiers; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS '04. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8742-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2004.1370725

Filename

1370725