Robust, Efficient Tunable LWIR Transmitter

"Recent world events highlight the need for portable, robust, standoff sensors that can provide early warning of chemical and biological attacks. Sensors are needed to provide search, detect, track and identification functions. Differential absorptionlidar (DIAL) has been demonstrated as one of the most promising techniques for standoff identification of chemical agents. However, to date, these sensors utilize CO2 laser transmitters which are large, cumbersome, not highly robust, have difficultyaccessing certain critical wavelengths, output nonideal pulse formats and have significant prime power requirements. The proposed work will develop an innovative optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based laser transmitter capable of replacing these CO2lasers. The end goal is a DIAL sensor suitable for use in civilian, military installation and battlefield settings; man and UAV portable; efficient enough to run off battery power; and capable of providing chemical identification functions with minimalfalse alarm rates and no false negatives. Advantages of the proposed transmitter over competing solid-state laser technologies include (1) an innovative, power-scalable, mass-manufacturable, patent-pending drive laser technology, (2) afrequency-conversion architecture enabling very high optical efficiency, (3) an electronic tuning scheme that provides rapid OPO wavelength selection and (4) a patent-pending bandwidth selection technique enabling