Demonstration of a 100-mJ OPO/OPA for future lidar applications and laser-induced damage threshold testing of optical components for MERLIN

Florian Elsen; Marie Livrozet; Michael Strotkamp; Jochen Wüppen; Bernd Jungbluth; Raphael Kasemann; Jens Löhring; Ansgar Meissner; Rudolf Meyer; Hans-Dieter Hoffmann; Reinhart Poprawe

doi:10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021205

23 September 2017 Demonstration of a 100-mJ OPO/OPA for future lidar applications and laser-induced damage threshold testing of optical components for MERLIN

Florian Elsen, Marie Livrozet, Michael Strotkamp, Jochen Wüppen, Bernd Jungbluth, Raphael Kasemann, Jens Löhring, Ansgar Meissner, Rudolf Meyer, Hans-Dieter Hoffmann, Reinhart Poprawe

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Optical Engineering, Vol. 57, Issue 2, 021205 (September 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021205

Abstract

In the field of atmospheric research, lidar is a powerful technology that can measure gas or aerosol concentrations, wind speed, or temperature profiles remotely. To conduct such measurements globally, spaceborne systems are advantageous. Pulse energies in the 100-mJ range are required to achieve highly accurate, longitudinal resolved measurements. Measuring concentrations of specific gases, such as CH₄ or CO₂, requires output wavelengths in the IR-B, which can be addressed by optical-parametric frequency conversion. An OPO/OPA frequency conversion setup was designed and built as a demonstration module to address the 1.6-μm range. The pump laser is an Nd:YAG-MOPA system, consisting of a stable oscillator and two subsequent Innoslab-based amplifier stages that deliver up to 500 mJ of output pulse energy at 100 Hz repetition frequency. The OPO is inherited from the OPO design for the CH₄ lidar instrument on the French–German climate satellite methane remote-sensing lidar mission (MERLIN). To address the 100-mJ regime, the OPO output beam is amplified in a subsequent multistage OPA. With potassium titanyl phosphate as nonlinear medium, the OPO/OPA delivered more than 100 mJ of output energy at 1645 nm from 450 mJ of the pump energy and a pump pulse duration of 30 ns. This corresponds to a quantum conversion efficiency of about 25%. In addition to demonstrating optical performance for future lidar systems, this laser will be part of a laser-induced damage thresholds test facility, which will be used to qualify optical components especially for the MERLIN.

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Florian Elsen, Marie Livrozet, Michael Strotkamp, Jochen Wüppen, Bernd Jungbluth, Raphael Kasemann, Jens Löhring, Ansgar Meissner, Rudolf Meyer, Hans-Dieter Hoffmann, and Reinhart Poprawe "Demonstration of a 100-mJ OPO/OPA for future lidar applications and laser-induced damage threshold testing of optical components for MERLIN," Optical Engineering 57(2), 021205 (23 September 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021205

Received: 25 April 2017; Accepted: 6 September 2017; Published: 23 September 2017

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