Metastable helium resonance fluorescence (1083.0nm) lidar has proven to be an effective technique for studying the 200-1000 km atmosphere which is important for enhancing the safety of low Earth orbit satellite and improving navigation accuracy. But the high energy pulsed laser required for this lidar system is a technical challenge. Here, a 1083 nm pulsed laser system for metastable helium lidar has been developed. The design consists of an optical parametric generation stage with single-frequency seed light injection, followed by high power optical parametric amplification to obtain a high pulse energy and narrow linewidth output(>100mJ,<100MHz)that meets helium lidar detection requirements. The laser source setup provides a basis for research related to metastable helium density measurements. Meanwhile, wavelength of the laser scanning can be achieved by tuning the current and temperature of the seed laser power source, which makes it possible to realize the measurements of the velocity and the temperature of thermosphere.
Zhou et al. (Thu,) studied this question.