Collaborative Research: Approaching "Ultimate" Lidar for Temperature and Wind Measurements in the Mesopause Region (CEDAR)

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This is a joint project between Colorado State University and the University of Nevada to develop a solid state continuous (cw) wave laser for an existing sodium resonance lidar. An essential element of the existing lidar is a stable, tunable, narrowband, cw laser beam that seeds the high power pulsed dye amplifier. The present unit uses an argon laser tube that is very large and expensive to replace. The solid state system uses two commercially available cw YAG lasers, one operating at 1.06 micrometers and the other at 1.32 micrometers which are combined to produce light at 589 nm, a resonantly scattered emission line of atomic sodium. This modification will reduce the size and complexity of the lidar to reduce operating costs and make it more easily moved to different locations. The investigators also propose to develop a twin-peak acoustooptic modulator for more rapid locking to specific Doppler- free features in the sodium spectrum. This will enable measurements of middle atmospheric properties with much higher time resolution than the present system. The University of Nevada will be in charge of the research and development of the cw sum- frequency generation of 589 nm radiation. Colorado State University will be responsible for development of the twin-peak acousto-optic modulator.