| The impetus of this work was to develop an all solid-state Ti:sapphire laser transmitter to replace the current dye lasers that could provide a potentially compact, robust, and highly reliable laser transmitter for differential absorption lidar measurements of atmospheric ozone. Two compact, high-energy pulsed, and injection-seeded Ti:sapphire lasers operating at a pulse repetition frequency of 30 Hz and wavelengths of 867 nm and 900 nm, with M2 of 1.3, have been experimentally demonstrated and compared to model results. The Ti:sapphire lasers have shown the required output beam quality at maximum output pulse energy, 115 mJ at 867 nm and 105 mJ at 900 nm, with a slope efficiency of 40% and 32%, respectively, to achieve 30 mJ of ultraviolet laser output at 289 run and 300 nm with two LBO nonlinear crystals. |
