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The need of atmospheric information with a higher spatial and temporal resolution drives the development of small satellites and satellite constellations to complement satellite flagship missions. Since optical systems are a main contributor to the satellite size, these are the prime candidate for their miniaturization. We present here a novel optical system where the complete spectrometer part of the optical system is compressed in one flat optical element. The element consists of an array of photonic crystals which is directly placed on a detector. The photonic crystals act as optical filters with a tunable spectral transmission response. From the integrated optical signals per filter and the atmosphere model, greenhouse gas concentrations are obtained using computational inversion. We present in this article the instrument concept, the manufacturing and measurement of the photonic crystals, methods for the filter array optimization, and discuss the predicted retrieval performance for the detection of methane and carbon dioxide., Comment: ICSO 2024

Frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) is a ranging technique that allows for high precision distance measurement over long distances. Scanning nonlinearity and range of the tunable laser are the main factors affecting the measurement accuracy. Frequency-sampling method is a recognized post-processing scheme to compensate the scanning nonlinearity. In this work, an FMCW laser distance measurement system using a high fineness Fabry-Perot (F-P) cavity as a sampling reference is demonstrated. The frequency of the resampled signal is calculated with a Hilbert transform. The high stability of the F-P cavity and the advantages of the Hilbert transform lead to a high measurement precision when an external cavity diode laser (ECDL) with a scanning range of tens of GHz is available. In this experiment, the scanning range of the ECDL is only 88 GHz, and a measurement uncertainty of 76.8 um (with coverage factor of k = 2) within a distance of 6.7 m is demonstrated.

The accuracy of long distance measurement in air is limited by the fluctuation of refractive index. In this paper, we propose a technique which allows us to measure an absolute distance in air without the knowledge of air turbulence. The technique is based on a femtosecond frequency comb. The fluctuation of the environmental conditions is monitored by two independently operating reference interferometers. The deviations of optical path lengths, caused by the fluctuation of air refractive index, is compensated by feedbacks from the reference interferometers. The measured optical path length is then locked to certain environmental conditions, determined at an optimized moment before the measurement process.

We describe a method to control the directional scattering of a high index dielectric nanosphere, which utilizes the unique focusing properties of an azimuthally polarized phase vortex and a radially polarized beam to independently excite insde the nanosphere a spinning magnetic dipole and a linearly polarized electric dipole mode normal to the magnetic dipole. We show that by simply adjusting the phase and amplitude of the field on the exit pupil of the optical system, the scattering of the nanosphere can be tuned to any direction within a plane and the method works over a broad wavelength range.

A high index dielectric nano-sphere can be excited and yet remain radiationless. A method to excite the non-radiating anapole mode of a high index isotropic dielectric nanosphere is presented. With tightly focused radially polarized beam illumination, the main-contributing electric dipole mode and magnetic modes can be zero with only a weak electric quadruple contributing to the total scattering. Further, with a standing wave illumination formed by two counter-propagating focused radially polarized beam under $4\pi$ configuration, the ideal radiationless ananpole can be excited.