We have developed a 1.6 microm carbon dioxide (CO(2)) differential absorption lidar utilizing a quasi-phase-matching optical parametric oscillator (OPO) and a photon-counting detector. The operating wavelengths were chosen based on their low interference from water vapor and low temperature sensitivity. The online wavelength was in the (30012<--0001) band of CO(2), which was insensitive to atmospheric temperature. The established OPO laser achieved a 10 mJ, 200 Hz repetition rate at the online and offline wavelengths. Our observations confirmed the statistical error of 2% with 5 h of accumulation for the CO(2) density profile less than 5.2 km. Also, the statistical error of 1% at an altitude of 2 km was demonstrated. The results of the vertical CO(2) concentrations acquired using a 1.6 microm wavelength are presented.

We have demonstrated the 1.6 mum cw modulation hard-target differential absorption lidar system for CO(2) sensing. In this system, ON and OFF wavelength laser lights are intensity modulated with cw signals. Received lights of the two wavelengths from the hard target are discriminated by modulation frequencies in the electrical signal domain. The optical circuit is fiber based, and this makes the system compact and reliable. It is shown that a stable CO(2) concentration measurement corresponding to a fluctuation of 4 ppm (rms) (ppm is parts per million) has been achieved in 32 s measurement intervals and the 1 km path.

In a previous study, we developed a 1.6 μm continuous-wave (cw) modulation laser absorption spectrometer system for CO(2) sensing and demonstrated the measurement of small fluctuations in CO(2) corresponding to a precision of 4 parts per million (ppm) with a measurement interval of 32 s. In this paper, we present the process to achieve this highly specific measurement by introducing important points, which have not been shown in the previous study. Following the results of preliminary experiments, we added a function for speckle averaging on the optical antenna unit. We additionally came up with some ideas to avoid the influences of etalon effects and polarization dependence in optical components. Because of the new functions, we realized a calibration precision of 0.006 dB (rms), which corresponds to a CO(2) concentration precision of less than 1 ppm for a 2 km path. We also analyzed the CO(2) sensing performance after the improvements described above. The measured short time fluctuation of the differential absorption optical depth was reasonably close to that calculated using the carrier-to-noise ratio of the received signal.

A feasibility study is carried out on a 1.6 μm continuous-wave modulation laser absorption spectrometer system for measurement of global CO(2)concentration from a satellite. The studies are performed for wavelength selection and both systematic and random error analyses. The systematic error in the differential absorption optical depth (DAOD) is mainly caused by the temperature estimation error, surface pressure estimation error, altitude estimation error, and ON wavelength instability. The systematic errors caused by unwanted backscattering from background aerosols and dust aerosols can be reduced to less than 0.26% by using a modulation frequency of around 200 kHz, when backscatter coefficients of these unwanted backscattering have a simple profile on altitude. The influence of backscattering from cirrus clouds is much larger than that of dust aerosols. The transmission power required to reduce the random error in the DAOD to 0.26% is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio and the carrier-to-noise ratio calculations. For a satellite altitude of 400 km and receiving aperture diameter of 1 m, the required transmission power is approximately 18 W and 70 W when albedo is 0.31 and 0.08, respectively; the total measurement time in this case is 4 s, which corresponds to a horizontal resolution of 28 km.

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We demonstrate a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system that emits single-frequency high-energy optical pulses at 1540 nm using an Er,Yb:glass planar waveguide amplifier and a large mode area Er-doped fiber amplifier. A double under-cladding and a 50-µm-thick core structure are employed for the planar waveguide amplifier to increase the output energy without degrading the beam quality. A pulse energy of 45.2 mJ with a peak power of 27 kW is generated at a pulse repetition rate of 150 Hz with a pulse duration of 1.7 µs. Moreover, the beam quality factor M2 of the output beam is 1.84 at the highest pulse energy thanks to its waveguide structure.

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Abstract. Simultaneous measurements of the partial column-averaged dry air mixing ratio of CO2 (XCO2) and target range were demonstrated using airborne amplitude-modulated 1.57 μm differential laser absorption spectrometer (LAS). The LAS system is useful for discriminating between ground and cloud return signals and has a demonstrated ability to suppress the impact of integrated aerosol signals on atmospheric CO2 measurements. A high correlation coefficient (R) of 0.987 between XCO2 observed by LAS and XCO2 calculated from in situ measurements was obtained. The averaged difference in XCO2 obtained from LAS and validation data was within 1.5 ppm for all spiral measurements. An interesting vertical profile was observed for both XCO2LAS and XCO2val, in which lower altitude CO2 decreases compared to higher altitude CO2 attributed to the photosynthesis over grassland in the summer. In the case of an urban area where there are boundary-layer enhanced CO2 and aerosol in the winter, the difference of XCO2LAS to XCO2val is a negative bias of 1.5 ppm, and XCO2LAS is in agreement with XCO2val within the measurement precision of 2.4 ppm (1 SD).