Novel Ultraviolet Laser Source for Ozone Differential Absorption Lidar

280-300 nm spectral region is part of ozone absorption spectrum, and lasers operating in this region might be used for lidar measurements. For example, the pulsed UV laser system is used by NASA for the Langley mobile ozone lidar (LMOL) operates in precisely that region. This system output is a train of alternating pulses at two distinct wavelengths from 285-300 nm spectral range. The laser active medium is a Ce:LiCAF crystal pumped by a quadrupled radiation from a Q-switched Nd:YLF laser. Such a laser scheme is bulky and has low efficiency: with 0.2 W of UV output power the system consumes 2 kW, so overall wall-plug efficiency is 0.01%. TIPD proposes to develop a simple, compact, robust, and efficient laser source based on GaN diodes and Tb-doped gain materials to satisfy NASArsquo;s requirements. In this phase I program, we will demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed laser source by developing a novel efficient Tb-doped oscillator.