Abstract

General lidar techniques can give information on atmospheric parameters only after the atmosphere is properly modeled. A Rayleigh-Mie scattering technique using an atomic blocking filter was proposed in 1983 for atmospheric temperature measurement.¹ This technique has been shown theoretically to be much more sensitive for temperature profiling than Raman and differential absorption techniques.² Recently, laboratory measurements of atmospheric temperature and backscatter ratio with a cw single-frequency dye laser and a Ba atomic vapor bandstop filter using the proposed technique have been made.³

© 1986 Optical Society of America