Design and Performance of the Vegetation Canopy Lidar (VLC) Laser Transmitter

摘要

The Vegetation Canopy Lidar (VCL) laser is a Nd:YAG Q-switched, diode side- pumped, zig-zag slab design producing 10 ns, 15 mJ pulses at 1064 nm. It employs an unstable resonator as well as a graded reflectivity output coupler with a Gaussian reflectivity profile. In order to conserve power, a conductively cooled design is employed and is designed to operate over a range of 25 deg C without active thermal control. The laser is an oscillator-only design and equipped with an 15X beam expander to limit the output divergence to less than 60 micro rad. Thermal lensing compensation in the side-pumped slab was performed with different treatments of the x and y portions of the z-directed beam. Performance data as a function of temperature are given.