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Femtosecond UV Laser Pulse Expander

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Contract: W31P4Q-09-C-0317
Agency Tracking Number: 08SB2-0073
Amount: $98,998.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: SB082-004
Solicitation Number: 2008.2
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2008
Award Year: 2009
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2009-03-10
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2009-11-23
Small Business Information
174 Galisteo Lane
Santa Fe, NM 87505
United States
DUNS: 607619223
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Daniel Kane
 President
 (505) 401-5271
 djkane@mesaphotonics.com
Business Contact
 Daniel Kane
Title: President
Phone: (505) 401-5271
Email: djkane@mesaphotonics.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

The UV portion of the spectrum is gaining interest for military applications both for its unique spectral window for remote sensing and for the identification of targets such as trace amounts of explosives, chem/bio agents, and toxic chemicals. Powerful, fieldable laser sources are required for most sensing applications. Ultrafast lasers represent a unique capability because pulse widths are short, and can be varied from less than 100 fs to over 1 ns by simply dispersing the pulse in time using commonly used stretcher/compressor technology used in ultrafast amplifiers. However, because ultrafast amplifiers are mostly used at IR wavelengths, stretcher/compressor technology has been optimized for these wavelength regions. Ideally, and because different chemical and biological processes occur on various sub-nanosecond time scales, the pulse width should be variable in order to optimize the detection of the material of interest. The variability in pulse width also allows the incident energy on target to be easily and predictably varied. Consequently, the pulse width adjustment must be agile over a range of pulse widths. This Phase I effort is designed to demonstrate feasibility of agile stretcher technology that can change UV ultrafast laser characteristics rapidly for UV remote sensing needs.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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