Femtosecond Laser Filamentation for Atmospheric Sensing.docVIP

Sensors 2011, 11, 32-53; doi:10.3390/s110100032 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Review Femtosecond Laser Filamentation for Atmospheric Sensing Huai Liang Xu 1,* and See Leang Chin 2 1 Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012, China 2 Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Optics Center for Optics, Photonics and Laser (COPL), Université Laval, Québec City, QC, G1V0A6, Canada; E-Mail: See.Leang.Chin@copl.ulaval.ca * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: huailiang@; Tel.: +86-431-8516-8244, ext. 8208; Fax: +86-431-8516-8281. Received: 19 November 2010; in revised form: 10 December 2010 / Accepted: 13 December 2010 / Published: 23 December 2010 Abstract: Powerful femtosecond laser pulses propagating in transparent materials result in the formation of self-guided structures called filaments. Such filamentation in air can be controlled to occur at a distance as far as a few kilometers, making it ideally suited for remote sensing of pollutants in the atmosphere. On the one hand, the high intensity inside the filaments can induce the fragmentation of all matters in the path of filaments, resulting in the emission of characteristic fluorescence spectra (fingerprints) from the excited fragments, which can be used for the identification of various substances including chemical and biological species. On the other hand, along with the femtosecond laser filamentation, white-light supercontinuum emission in the infrared to UV range is generated, which can be used as an ideal light source for absorption Lidar. In this paper, we present an overview of recent progress concerning remote sensing of the atmosphere using femtosecond laser filamentation. Keywords: femtosecond laser; filamentation; remote sensing 1. Introduction Laser-based sp