The lidar complex of equipment based on TEA CO₂ laser specially designed for atmospheric sensing, with automatic tuning on generation lines in the spectral ranges 9 - 11.3 and 4.5 - 5.6 micrometers has been described. Besides regular transitions 00⁰1 - 10¹0 (02⁰0), the laser is able to generate powerful (megawatt) pulses on hot band (01¹ - 11¹0) lines. Considerable extension of the spectral range to the short-wave region is attained due to effective TEA CO₂ laser second harmonic generation in nonlinear crystals. Taking into the real potentialities of the lidar complex in hand, using a package of spectroscopic data HITRAN, computer simulation of atmospheric transmission has been made. On this bases, by the method of differential absorption a method has been elaborated for measuring small concentrations of a large number of gases, including especially dangerous atmospheric pollutants CO, C₂H₄, etc. This method was tried out on medium paths (approximately 1 km) in the real conditions of Minsk. Small (background) concentrations of a number of atmospheric gases have been measured.

Date Published: 25 January 2000
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 4064, Third International Workshop on Nondestructive Testing and Computer Simulations in Science and Engineering, (25 January 2000); doi: 10.1117/12.375430

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4064:
Third International Workshop on Nondestructive Testing and Computer Simulations in Science and Engineering
Alexander I. Melker, Editor(s)