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LASER DIAGNOSTICS AND SPECTROSCOPY
Elbrus activity sensing by eye-safe lidar based on diode laser proposed by Basov-Krokhin-Popov in 1960: to the 100th anniversary of Nikolai Basov
S.Pershin1, V.Zavozin1, M.Grishin1, V.Makarov2, S.Yakimenko3, Ya. Ponurovsky1, A. Ushakov1
ALT'22
1- Prokhorov General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119991 Russia 2- Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117133 Russia 3- Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117312 Russia
pershin@kapella.gpi.ru
In 1960 N. Basov, O. Krokhin and Yu. Popov [1] have proposed the physical principles of operation of injection diode lasers. Later Zhores Alferov has demonstrated that diode laser efficiency to 90% can be achieved [2] who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000. In 1991 [3] Russian scientists have opened a new era of an environmental sensing by eye-safe lidar (<1 ^J cm-2) based on a pulsed GaAlAs diode laser with high (kHz) repetition rate. We have developed the new principle of lidar sensing based on single photon avalanche diode (SPAD). It allows us to use extremely low laser diode pulse energy (~1 J and eye-safe energy density (<1 mJ-cm-2) for environmental sensing without eyes protection. Actually, the Geiger mode of SPAD operating has only noise-proof digital circuits without analog preamplifiers. Note, the probability of a return photon registration per each laser pulse is 1. This feature allows us to sounding through multi-layered clouds by lidar [4] or through fog and smoke, tree canopy and so on [5]. The most intriguing fact is that our lidar (among others from Europe, USA and Canada) won for the first time the NASA competition in 1996 and was involved in the NASA mission Mars Polar Lander-99 [6]. Remarkably, in Dec 03.1999 the NASA delivered the Lander to the Martian surface. So we have announced: "The Lidar of Russian Academy of Sciences is the "First Lidar" on the Martian surface. This is our contribution to collection of titles "First: sputnik, kosmonaut Gagarin, Leonov, Lunokhod,... Exciting applications of this new lidar principle were demonstrated (in the beginning of 2000s) in self-driving cars and other unmanned platforms with eye-safe lidars based on diode lasers and our principle [3].
Recently, we have installed our microlidar (weight ~380 g, Fig.1a) in the hot tunnel above the Elbrus volcanic chamber inside the Baksan Neutrino Observatory (Fig.1b) to monitor volcanic activity due to aerosol and gases variation.
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Fig.1. (a) Microlidar, (b) BNO hot tunnel, (c) gas emanation in the hot tunnel: radon (1), H2O (2) and aerosol (3).
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We have revealed (Fig.1c) short bursts (~2 h) of aerosol backscattering over the seasonal decreasing trend coincide with radon emission (222Rn) and with a pulsed increase (2-3%) in air humidity Around 300% jumps of lidar backscattering were detected for the first time in 21.10.2019 and periodical aerosol emanation in (7-11)10.2019. An inverted the temperature profile was measured in the BNO tunnel with high concentration of heavy magmatic gases (12CO2 and 13CO2). Reversed air convection mechanism was proposed and discussed to explain the revealed features.
The authors gratefully acknowledge Russian Science Foundation for the financial support of the study (project no. 19-19-00712-P).
[1] N.Basov, O.Krokhin and Y.Popov, JETP, 11(3), 720 (1960); Physics-Uspekhi, 3(5), 702-728 (1961)
[2] Zhores Alferov, Nobel Prize lcture in Physics, (2000).
[3] S.Pershin, V.Linkin, VMakarov, I.Prochazka and K.Hamal, 1991 Spaceborn laser altimeter based on the single photon diode receiver and semiconductor laser transmitter, CLEO OSA Technical Digest vol 10 (Baltimore, MD: Optical Society of America) p CFI1
[4] Pershin S.M., et al., Aerosol layers sensing by an eye-safe lidar near the Elbrus summit, Laser Phys. Lett., v.17(2), 026003, (2020).
[5] S. M. Pershin, M.Ya.Grishin, V A. Zavozin et al., Lidar Sensing of Multilayer Fog Evolution in the Inclined Tunnel of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory, Bulletin of the Lebedev Physics Institute, , Vol. 46, No. 10, pp. 328-332 (2019).
[6] https://mars.nasa.gov/internal_resources/818/
