Improved airborne UV DIAL/aerosol lidar system using a diode pumped solid state laser transmitter

摘要

An improved version of the NASA airborne UV differential absorption lidar (DIAL) has been designed which will be deployed in field experiments beginning late 1999. The lidar system measures atmospheric ozone concentrations and aerosol properties in nadir and zenith directions from NASA's DC-8 airborne platform. Significant reductions in size, weight, and power consumption are achieved by replacing two flashlamp pumped lasers with a single diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser. Other improvements include replacing the steel invar optical bench with a carbon-epoxy bench, replacing a transmission optics aluminum breadboard with a carbon-epoxy version, and the inclusion of an additional nadir-viewing receiver channel to measure the depolarized component from tropospheric aerosols. The lidar transmitter utilizes a double pulsed diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser pumping two high-conversion efficiency tunable dye lasers, frequency-doubled to UV wavelengths for ozone measurements. Residual first harmonics from dye and Nd:YAG lasers are used for aerosol measurements.