Guide-Star Laser Source

导星激光源

• 批准号: 9360186
• 负责人: Allen Flusberg
• 金额: $ 6.49万
• 依托单位: Science Research Laboratory Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1994
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1994-02-01 至 1995-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9360186&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Guide; Star; Laser; Source

9360186 Flusberg Recently declassified military research has validated the applicability of artificial guide stars to atmospheric compensation for astronomical observations. Of the two alternative guide-star techniques that have been demonstrated, the more promising is the laser-induced generation of an artificial star in the sodium layer located at an altitude of 95 km. The required laser power depends strongly on the observation wavelength of the telescope. It ranges from about 2 watts in the infrared (2000 nm) to 300 watts in the visible (500 nm). For a large, visible-light telescope, a pulsed laser beam with approximately one joule of energy, repetitively pulsed at several hundred hertz and tuned to the 589-nm sodium-D line is needed to generate a suitable guide star. To make this source acceptable to the astronomical community, such a laser should be inexpensive, compact and reliable. A flashlamp-pumped dye-laser system will be developed for this application. Recent advances in flashlamp-pumped dye-laser design have greatly increased the achievable efficiency and beam quality, while recently developed all-solid-state magnetic-compression-pulser technology that has demonstrated a lifetime of 7 x 1010 shots in similar applications can be used to make pulsed dye laser much more compact and reliable. These advances and recently developed dye-laser modeling codes will be used to design a guide- star laser source. ***

小行星9360186 最近解密的军事研究证实了人工导航星对天文观测大气补偿的适用性。 在已经证明的两种替代性引导星星技术中，更有希望的是在95公里高度的钠层中用激光诱导产生人造星星。 所需的激光功率在很大程度上取决于望远镜的观测波长。 它的范围从约2瓦的红外（2000 nm）到300瓦的可见光（500 nm）。 对于大型可见光望远镜，需要一束能量约为1焦耳的脉冲激光束，以几百赫兹的频率重复脉冲，并调谐到589 nm的钠-D线，以产生合适的引导星星。 为了使这种光源为天文学界所接受，这种激光器应该是廉价、紧凑和可靠的。 为此，将研制一种闪光灯泵浦的染料激光系统。 闪光灯泵浦的染料激光器设计的最新进展大大提高了可实现的效率和光束质量，而最近开发的全固态磁压缩脉冲发生器技术，在类似的应用中已经证明了7 × 1010次的寿命，可以用来使脉冲染料激光器更加紧凑和可靠。 这些进展和最近开发的染料激光模拟程序将用于设计一个引导星星激光源。 ***