Carbon Dioxide Lidar This SBIR matures thulium fiber MOPA technology for NASA Space based measurements of carbon dioxide using methods developed for NASA ASCENDS program. Lidar offers the vertical resolution and can make measurements in daytime and nighttime conditions to complement passive optical spectroscopic measurement being made by the NASA OCO mission. ?? The Thulium MOPA amplifier can also operate on water vapor lines for IPDA lidar for Earth, Mars and Planetary bodies. Strong water vapor lines exist in the same general 2050-2070 nm region for earth science lidar and can all be reached with this TDFA approach where the absorption lines are strong and isolated from other species and the spectroscopy is well characterized with acceptable thermal broadening. For planetary or asteroid-type missions, where very low or trace concentrations of various species are expected, the TDFA can reach the 1.8-2.1 ?m range where very strong absorption lines are available. The 2um thulium amplifier also supports lidar technology that can measure Mars atmospheric density, winds needed to understand the planets evolution and data needed for EDL aero capture landing.
The core technology developed as part of this SBIR can address a large market for eye-safe lasers and lidars particularly with Fibertek's DoD customers. There are no ubiquitous laser transmitters at 1.5 ?m that are comparable to an Nd laser at 1.06 ?m. This SBIR offers an opportunity to change that. Applications for eye-safe long-distance free-space lasers include coherent lidar for wind or hard-target velocity detection, range resolved target or atmospheric detection using a chirped pulse seed laser and receiver; infrared countermeasures (IRCM) DoD market; coherent imaging; and frequency conversion into the 3.3 ?m range for methane and numerous other trace gasses such as CO and other carbon compounds in the 3-5 ?m region.
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