Abstract

For long range differential absorption lidar (DIAL), high energy nanosecond pulses have to be generated from a coherent light source with suitable properties in terms of spectral linewidth, purity, side-mode suppression ratio, and long term stability, in order to provide accurate and precise concentration measurements. A powerful approach for finely measuring these characteristics is optical heterodyne analysis. In particular, it enables to have access to the spectral properties of each single pulse [1]. Up to now, this technique has been extensively implemented on injection seeded pulsed lasers [2] and OPOs [3, 4], especially for assessing and controlling the quality of the injection process.

© 2015 IEEE