Teramobile : a Nonlinear Femtosecond Terawatt Lidar

We present a novel approach to characterize the atmosphere by Lidar, based on the non-linear propagation of ultrashort and ultra-intense laser pulses. For this, we built the first mobile femtosecond Terawatt Lidar system, the "Teramobile". While propagating in the atmosphere these ultra-intense laser pulses are self-guided in stable superstructures (filaments) and generate coherent superbroadband emission from the UV to the IR. Applications cover simultaneous multipollutant Lidar detection, longer range NIR-MIR Lidar, self-guiding through turbulence and clouds, and remote analysis of aerosols size and composition.