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Semiconductor lasers for NASA applications

Authors :
M. G. Young
Richard E. Muller
P. Maker
L. Davis
S. Forouhar
Sam A. Keo
Source :
AIP Conference Proceedings.
Publication Year :
1998
Publisher :
AIP, 1998.

Abstract

Lasers play a key role in a wide variety of applications relevant to NASA missions and instruments. These include such diverse areas as spectroscopy, communications, signal processing, metrology and micro-instruments. The unique characteristics of lasers including high optical power in a narrow wavelength range, small beam divergence, phase coherence, and high-frequency modulation, make lasers ideal sources for many of these applications. However, the large size, high power requirements, and relative fragility of conventional gas and solid-state lasers have limited their usefulness for many spaceborne instruments. With the advent of semiconductor lasers, it is now possible to fabricate much smaller, higher efficiency lasers and laser instruments, making them practical choices for a wide variety of applications in space missions. Semiconductor lasers also offer orders-of-magnitude increases in communication bandwidth which enables tremendous enhancements in spacecraft to ground and inter-instrument data tr...

Details

ISSN :
0094243X
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
AIP Conference Proceedings
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........29cb901a14b611e71f60744ce79b218a
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.54888