Sodium temperature lidar based on injection seeded Nd:YAG pulse lasers using a sum-frequency generation technique.

We report on a sodium (Na) temperature lidar based on two injection seeded Nd:YAG pulse lasers using single-pass sum-frequency generation. The laser power at 589 nm is 400 mW (40 mJ per pulse at a repetition rate of 10 Hz) and the pulse width is 22 nsec FWHM. The narrowband laser tuned to the Doppler broadened Na D2 spectrum enables us to measure the temperature of the mesopause region (80-115 km).