Injection-Free and Cavity Free Parametric Sources for Future Spaceborne DIAL Based on Periodically Poled Nonlinear Materials

We present new parametric source architectures for future spaceborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL). This work focalizes on the developments performed during LEMON H2020 project using periodically poled nonlinear crystals. Such phase matching configuration offers the possibility to go towards more simple and robust set-ups for future space operation. We investigated injection-free optical parametric oscillator OPO set-ups, such as the Nested Cavity OPO–which allows a broad tuning range and thus can address several gas species with a single OPO—and also propose an injection and cavity free OPO solution using the counter-propagating phase matching configuration (Backward wave OPO). Moreover, we studied the implementation of high efficiency optical parametric amplifiers, to investigate the possibility to scale the output energies to several tens of mJ in the 2 µm region, and performed radiation testing on the specifically developed, large aperture, periodically poled KTP crystals.