A new frontier in ranging and sensing: mid-infrared hyperspectral chaos LiDAR via frequency conversion

Chaos LiDAR enables unambiguous ranging with superior anti-jamming properties, though its applications have been primarily demonstrated in the near-infrared region. Leveraging the excellent atmospheric transparency, strong resistance to scattering and turbulence, and the molecular fingerprint characteristics of the mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths, MIR chaos LiDAR could be particularly advantageous for achieving unambiguous ranging and remote sensing. However, the lack of broadband chaotic light and fast photodetectors in the MIR region hinders the realization of high-performance MIR chaos LiDAR. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, a frequency conversion-based MIR chaos LiDAR that employs a novel MIR chaos laser generated via frequency down-conversion of near-infrared random fiber laser and the up-conversion chaos detection. The approach facilitates the generation of a wavelength-tunable MIR laser with a large chaos bandwidth, enabling MIR hyperspectral chaos LiDAR operating within the 3-5 μm atmospheric window that integrates centimeter-level high-resolution ranging and spectroscopy, highlighting its potential for remote sensing applications. This work provides a new paradigm for high-resolution ranging and hyperspectral imaging in arbitrary spectral regions where broadband chaos light generation and detection are challenging.