Development for Remote Sensing

The project work will address ground-breaking aspects of laser technology to enable new applications in remote sensing. The project will investigate and develop diode-pumped Alexandrite lasers whose efficient, broadband tunability with novel short pulsing capabilities enable space-borne remote sensing. Emphasis will be on developing small size, weight and low power appropriate to implementation on mobile platform (e.g. satellite and airborne). The work will progress and build on the already groundbreaking initial work at Imperial College (>26W in diode-pumped Alexandrite, 20-times higher than previous results).
Two key aspects will be addressed. The first is the develop of directly-diode-pumped high power pulsed Alexandrite laser for satellite-based Earth Observation using the wavelength flexibility to address atmospheric monitoring and also vegetation remote sensing. The PhD project work would support the building of world-first laser technology for future implementation in airborne remote sensing applications. The second aspect of the project will be development of suitable detectors for the remote sensing (ranging and lidar) and in particular single photon counting detectors.
The scope of the PhD work should provide the opportunity for significant groundbreaking contribution to the scientific field in this area and an excellent training in experimental and theoretical techniques and broader understanding of applications and markets for laser-based instrumentation.