Suppression of Rayleigh scattering noise in sodium laser guide stars by hyperfine depolarization of fluorescence

We propose what we believe is a novel method for enabling the complete suppression of noise due to Rayleigh scattering in sodium laser guide star systems by means of selective discrimination between Rayleigh and fluorescence signals based on polarization properties. We show that, contrary to the nea...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2006-11, Vol.14 (24), p.11494-11505
Main Authors: Guillet de Chatellus, Hugues, Moldovan, Ioana, Fesquet, Vincent, Pique, Jean-Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Optics
Physics
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We propose what we believe is a novel method for enabling the complete suppression of noise due to Rayleigh scattering in sodium laser guide star systems by means of selective discrimination between Rayleigh and fluorescence signals based on polarization properties. We show that, contrary to the nearly 100% polarized Rayleigh scattering, fluorescence from the D(2) sodium line is strongly depolarized under excitation by a modeless laser. This offers the possibility of completely cancelling the effects of the Rayleigh scattering background while preserving the fluorescence signal to about 40% of its maximal value, leading to an improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio by several orders of magnitude. Both theoretical and experimental data confirm this new proposal.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.14.011494