High gain backward lasing in air

Abstract

The need for molecular standoff detection has motivated the development of a remotely pumped, high gain air laser that produces lasing in the backward direction and can sample the air as the beam returns. High gain is achieved in the near infrared following pumping with a focused ultraviolet laser. The pumping mechanism is simultaneous resonant two-photon dissociation of molecular oxygen and resonant two-photon pumping of the atomic oxygen fragments. The high gain from the millimeter length focal zone leads to equally strong lasing in the forward and backward directions. Further backward amplification is achieved using prior laser spark dissociation.

4 pages, 4 figures

Cited by in corpus (29)

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• Remote creation of strong and coherent emissions in air with two-color ultrafast laser pulses
• Lasing of ambient air with microjoule pulse energy pumped by a multi terawatt IR femtosecond laser
• Gain dynamics of a free-space nitrogen laser pumped by circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses
• Amplification of intense light fields by nearly free electrons
• Coherent control of superradiance from nitrogen ions pumped with femtosecond pulses
• Continuous-wave mirrorless lasing at 2.21 μm in sodium vapors
• Structured air lasing of N2+
• Harmonic-seeded remote laser emissions in N2-Ar, N2-Xe and N2-Ne mixtures: a comparative study
• Exit momentum and instantaneous ionization rate of nonadiabatic tunneling ionization in elliptically polarized laser fields
• Stand-off magnetometry with directional emission from sodium vapors
• Polychromatic, continuous-wave mirrorless lasing from monochromatic pumping of cesium vapor
• Femtosecond two-photon-excited backward lasing of atomic hydrogen in flame
• Photon retention in coherently excited nitrogen ions
• Laser beam self-symmetrization in air in the multifilamentation regime
• Non-linear Synthesis of Complex Laser Waveforms at Remote Distances
• Amplification of light pulses with orbital angular momentum (OAM) in nitrogen ions lasing
• Electronic-vibrational dynamics and coherence in x-ray transient absorption of N2+ induced by strong-field ionization
• Controlling the polarization of nitrogen ion lasing
• Laser Driven Fluorescence Emission in a Nitrogen Gas Jet at 100 MHz Repetition Rate
• Brief comment: Dicke Superradiance and Superfluorescence Find Application for Remote Sensing in Air
• Revisiting self-seeding mechanism by generating vector ultraviolet N${}_2^{+}$ lasing
• Backward air lasing actions induced by femtosecond laser filamentation: influence of population inversion lifetime
• Externally seeded backward lasing radiation from femtosecond laser filament in nitrogen gas
• Structure, dynamics and light localization in self-induced plasma photonic lattices
• Lasing without population inversion in air