High Speed AO Wavelength Selector for CO2 Heterodyne Remote Sensing of Aerosols

The U.S Army has identified the need to develop and demonstrate the technology necessary to characterize chemical aerosols and vapor clouds at stand-off ranges up to 5 km. Of interest is the capability to increase detection sensitivity and range for systems that may be incorporated into various stationary or moving platforms. Moving platforms could include ground vehicles, ships, helicopters, Tactical/Unmanned aerial vehicles (TUAV/UAV), and Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicles (TUGV). Limitations in mobile platform resources call for the advancement of compact and efficient active sensors. Coherent heterodyne detection is a technology that has the potential to improve aerosol and vapor cloud detection sensitivity and range while reducing sensor size and weight. Coherent Applications, Inc. (CAI) and Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) have teamed to propose an analysis of the expected performance of Acousto-Optic (AO) tuners on waveguide and TEA lasers, and to design a laboratory system that will provide experimental testing of the predictions.