Pulsed laser source digital holography efficiency measurements.

In this paper, a 1064 nm pulsed laser source and a short-wave IR (SWIR) camera are used to measure the total system efficiency associated with a digital holography system in the off-axis image plane recording geometry. At a zero path-length difference between the signal and reference pulses, the measured total system efficiency (15.9%) is consistent with that previously obtained with a 532 nm continuous-wave laser source and a visible camera [Appl. Opt.58, G19 (2019)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.58.000G19]. In addition, as a function of the temporal delay between the signal and reference pulses, the total system efficiency is accurately characterized by a component efficiency, which is formulated from the ambiguity function. Even with multimode behavior from the pulsed laser source and substantial dark current noise from the SWIR camera, the system performance is accurately characterized by the resulting ambiguity efficiency.

Deep-turbulence wavefront sensing using digital holography in the on-axis phase shifting recording geometry with comparisons to the self-referencing interferometer.

In this paper, we study the use of digital holography in the on-axis phase-shifting recording geometry for the purposes of deep-turbulence wavefront sensing. In particular, we develop closed-form expressions for the field-estimated Strehl ratio and signal-to-noise ratio for three separate phase-shifting strategies-the four-, three-, and two-step methods. These closed-form expressions compare favorably with our detailed wave-optics simulations, which propagate a point-source beacon through deep-turbulence conditions, model digital holography with noise, and calculate the Monte Carlo averages associated with increasing turbulence strengths and decreasing focal-plane array sampling. Overall, the results show the four-step method is the most efficient phase-shifting strategy and deep-turbulence conditions only degrade performance with respect to insufficient focal-plane array sampling and low signal-to-noise ratios. The results also show the strong reference beam from the local oscillator provided by digital holography greatly improves performance by tens of decibels when compared with the self-referencing interferometer.

Digital holography efficiency measurements with excess noise.

In this paper, we use digital holography (DH) in the off-axis image plane recording geometry with a 532 nm continuous-wave laser to measure the system efficiencies (multiplicative losses) associated with a closed-form expression for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Measurements of the mixing efficiency (36.8%) and the reference noise efficiency (74.5%) provide an expected total system efficiency of 22.7%±6.5% and a measured total system efficiency of 21.1%±6.3%. These total noise efficiencies do not include our measurements of the signal noise efficiency (3%-100%), which are highly dependent on the signal strength and become significant for SNRs>100. Thus, the results confirm that the mixing efficiency is generally the dominant multiplicative loss with respect to the DH system under test; however, excess reference and signal noise are significant multiplicative losses as well. Previous results also agree with these experimental findings.

Open-Path Atmospheric Transmission of Diode-Pumped Alkali Lasers in Maritime and Desert Environments.

A tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) device has been developed to study long-path atmospheric transmission near diode pumped alkali laser (DPAL) emission wavelengths. By employing a single aperture and retro reflector in a mono-static configuration, the noise associated with atmospheric and platform jitter were reduced by a factor of ∼30 and the open-air path length was extended to 4.4 km and over a very broad spectral range, up to 120 cm-1. Water vapor absorption lines near the rubidium (Rb) and cesium (Cs) variants of the DPAL near 795 and 894 nm, oxygen lines near the potassium (K) DPAL near 770 nm, and water vapor absorption in the vicinity of the neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser 1.064 µm and chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) 1.3 µm lines were studied. The detection limit for path absorbance increases from ΔA = 0.0017 at 100 m path length to 0.085 for the 4.4 km path. Comparison with meteorological instruments for maritime and desert environments yields agreement for the 2.032 km path to within 1.5% for temperature, 4.5% for pressure, and 5.1% for concentration, while agreements for the 4.4 km path are within 1.4% for temperature, 7.7% for pressure, and 23.5% for concentration. An intra cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS) device was also used as a spectral reference to verify location of atmospheric lines. Implications of TDLAS collection system design on signal-to-noise (S/N) are discussed as well as the effect of path turbulence on baseline noise and inform the selection of the DPAL variant least affected by molecular absorption.

Open-path atmospheric transmission for a diode-pumped cesium laser.

A tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy device was developed to study atmospheric propagation for emerging high-energy laser weapons. The cesium diode-pumped alkali laser operates near 895 nm in the vicinity of several water-vapor absorption lines. Temperature, pressure, and water vapor concentration were determined for 150 m and 1 km open paths with statistical errors of ∼0.2%. Comparison with meteorological instruments yields agreement for the 1 km path to within 0.6% for temperature, 3.7% for pressure, and 2.4% for concentration.

Instrumental error in chromotomosynthetic hyperspectral imaging.

Chromotomosynthetic imaging (CTI) is a method of convolving spatial and spectral information that can be reconstructed into a hyperspectral image cube using the same transforms employed in medical tomosynthesis. A direct vision prism instrument operating in the visible (400-725 nm) with 0.6 mrad instantaneous field of view (IFOV) and 0.6-10 nm spectral resolution has been constructed and characterized. Reconstruction of hyperspectral data cubes requires an estimation of the instrument component properties that define the forward transform. We analyze the systematic instrumental error in collected projection data resulting from prism spectral dispersion, prism alignment, detector array position, and prism rotation angle. The shifting and broadening of both the spectral lineshape function and the spatial point spread function in the reconstructed hyperspectral imagery is compared with experimental results for monochromatic point sources. The shorter wavelength (λ<500 nm) region where the prism has the highest spectral dispersion suffers mostly from degradation of spectral resolution in the presence of systematic error, while longer wavelengths (λ>600 nm) suffer mostly from a shift of the spectral peaks. The quality of the reconstructed hyperspectral imagery is most sensitive to the misalignment of the prism rotation mount. With less than 1° total angular error in the two axes of freedom, spectral resolution was degraded by as much as a factor of 2 in the blue spectral region. For larger errors than this, spectral peaks begin to split into bimodal distributions, and spatial point response functions are reconstructed in rings with radii proportional to wavelength and spatial resolution.

Remote identification and quantification of industrial smokestack effluents via imaging Fourier-transform spectroscopy.

Industrial smokestack plume emissions were remotely measured with a midwave infrared (1800-3000 cm(-1)) imaging Fourier-transform spectrometer operating at moderate spatial (128 × 64 with 19.4 × 19.4 cm(2) per pixel) and high spectral (0.25 cm(-1)) resolution over a 20 min period. Strong emissions from CO(2), H(2)O, SO(2), NO, HCl, and CO were observed. A single-layer plume radiative transfer model was used to estimate temperature T and effluent column densities q(i) for each pixel's spectrum immediately above the smokestack exit. Across the stack, temperature was uniform with T = 396.3 ± 1.3 K (mean ± stdev), and each q(i) varied in accordance with the plume path length defined by its cylindrical geometry. Estimated CO(2) and SO(2) volume fractions of 8.6 ± 0.4% and 380 ± 23 ppm(v), respectively, compared favorably with in situ measurements of 9.40 ± 0.03% and 383 ± 2 ppm(v). Total in situ NO(x) concentration (NO + NO(2)) was reported at 120 ± 1 ppm(v). While NO(2) was not spectrally detected, NO was remotely observed with a concentration of 104 ± 7 ppm(v). Concentration estimates for the unmonitored species CO, HCl, and H(2)O were 14.4 ± 0.3 ppm(v), 88 ± 1 ppm(v), and 4.7 ± 0.1%, respectively.

Crossed-beam intermodulated fluorescence spectroscopy as a spatially resolved temperature diagnostic for supersonic nozzles.

A variant of laser saturation spectroscopy has been applied to the determination of spatially resolved temperature in low-pressure supersonic flows. By copropagating a pump and probe beam with a small crossing angle, the full Doppler profile is retained, but the signal is limited to the volume where both beams are overlapped. The technique was demonstrated on several rovibrational lines of the I2X1Sigma(0g+)-->B3Pi(0u+) transition in a Mach 2 Laval nozzle. A temperature of 146 K+/-1.5 K was extracted from measurements of the I2P(46) 17-1 spectral line with a spatial resolution of 2.4 mm3. Application of the technique to the turbulent gain medium of a chemical oxygen-iodine laser is discussed.

Gas-phase plume from laser-irradiated fiberglass-reinforced polymers via imaging fourier transform spectroscopy.

Emissive plumes from laser-irradiated fiberglass-reinforced polymers (FRP) were investigated using a mid-infrared imaging Fourier transform spectrometer, operating at fast framing rates (50 kHz imagery and 2.5 Hz hyperspectral imagery) with adequate spatial (0.81 mm(2) per pixel) and spectral resolution (2 cm(-1)). Fiberglass-reinforced polymer targets were irradiated with a 1064 nm continuous wave neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser for 60 s at 100 W in air. Strong emissions from H(2)O, CO, CO(2), and hydrocarbons were observed between 1800 and 5000 cm(-1). A single-layer radiative transfer model was developed for the spectral region from 2000 to 2400 cm(-1) to estimate spatial maps of temperature and column densities of CO and CO(2) from the hyperspectral imagery. The spectral model was used to compute the absorption cross sections of CO and CO(2) using spectral line parameters from the high-temperature extension of the HITRAN. The analysis of pre-combustion spectra yields effective temperatures rising from ambient to 1200 K and suddenly increasing to 1515 K upon combustion. The peak signal-to-noise ratio for a single spectrum exceeds 60:1, enabling temperature and column density determinations with low statistical error. For example, the spectral analysis for a single pixel within a single frame yields an effective temperature of 1019 ± 6 K, and CO and CO(2) column densities of 1.14 ± 0.05 and 1.11 ± 0.03 × 10(18) molec/cm(2), respectively. Systematic errors associated with the radiative transfer model dominate, yielding effective temperatures with uncertainties of >100 K and column densities to within a factor of 2-3. Hydrocarbon emission at 2800 to 3200 cm(-1) is well correlated with CO column density.

Short-range demonstrations of monocular passive ranging using O2 (X3Σg- → b1Σg+) absorption spectra.

The depth of absorption bands in observed spectra of distant, bright sources can be used to estimate range to the source. Experimental results are presented based on observations of the O2 X(v" = 0) → b(v' = 0) absorption band centered around 762 nm and the O2 X(v" = 0) → b(v' = 1) band around 689 nm. Range is estimated by comparing observed values of band-average absorption against predicted curves derived from either historical data or model predictions. Accuracy of better than 0.5% was verified in short-range (up to 3 km), static experiments using a high-resolution (1 cm(-1)) spectroradiometer. This method was also tested against the exhaust plume of a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket was launched from an initial range of 13 km and tracked for 90 s after ignition. Range error was below 2% for the first 30 s and consistent with predicted error throughout the track.

Spatial and spectral performance of a chromotomosynthetic hyperspectral imaging system.

The spatial and spectral resolutions achievable by a prototype rotating prism chromotomosynthetic imaging (CTI) system operating in the visible spectrum are described. The instrument creates hyperspectral imagery by collecting a set of 2D images with each spectrally projected at a different rotation angle of the prism. Mathematical reconstruction techniques that have been well tested in the field of medical physics are used to reconstruct the data to produce the 3D hyperspectral image. The instrument operates with a 100 mm focusing lens in the spectral range of 400-900 nm with a field of view of 71.6 mrad and angular resolution of 0.8-1.6 µrad. The spectral resolution is 0.6 nm at the shortest wavelengths, degrading to over 10 nm at the longest wavelengths. Measurements using a point-like target show that performance is limited by chromatic aberration. The system model is slightly inaccurate due to poor estimation of detector spatial resolution, this is corrected based on results improving model performance. As with traditional dispersion technology, calibration of the transformed wavelength axis is required, though with this technology calibration improves both spectral and spatial resolution. While this prototype does not operate at high speeds, components exist which will allow for CTI systems to generate hyperspectral video imagery at rates greater than 100 Hz.

Electronic state distributions of YBa2Cu3O(7-x) laser-ablated plumes.

A systematic study of the spectrally resolved atomic emission arising from the laser ablation of YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-x) targets in the presence of an oxygen background reveals statistically distributed populations with characteristic temporally averaged electronic temperatures of 0.28-0.38 eV, 0.28-0.37 eV, and 0.40-0.48 eV for neutral barium, yttrium, and copper, respectively. The higher electronic temperatures of the lighter copper atoms cannot be explained by the effects of temporal averaging, as the time-of-flight spectra are similar for all three atomic species. The electronic temperatures decline slowly with distance from the target, with a characteristic length of 20 to 200 mean free paths. The plume kinetic energies determined from gated imagery recorded time-of-flight spectra are much higher, 3-250 eV, suggesting a small fraction of the kinetic energy is converted to electronic excitation during each collision at the shock contact front. A correlation between electronic temperatures and shock strength reduces the dimensionality of the dependence on pressure and target distance. The dependence of electronic temperature on deposition condition is weak, suggesting the electronic state distribution is a poor candidate as a monitor for process control during the manufacture of coated conductors.

Predissociation of Bi2 A(0u+), v'=21-39.

Collisionless lifetimes for Bi2 A(0u+), v'=20-39, J'X) spectrum required both traditional lifetime measurements and synthetic spectrum fits to laser excitation spectra to determine the full range of observed rates. A single, repulsive potential responsible for the observed A-state predissociation could not be identified to adequately describe the vibrational dependence of the predissociation rates.