HASTUR Project
Harnessing Atmospheric Lasing: Towards Ultrasensitive Detection of Toxic Agents and Pathogens
ETSII-UPM. Instituto de Fusión Nuclear Guillermo Velarde
This project is part of my PhD thesis during the academic years 2024–2027 at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
The main goal of this thesis is to study the detection of toxic agents and pathogens in the upper layers of the atmosphere by exploiting the presence of molecular nitrogen. These nitrogen molecules can act as an active medium, which amplifies radiation of a specific frequency when interacting with nitrogen, generating laser emission. The interaction between laser light and surrounding matter in the atmosphere can be used to determine the hidden presence of undesired contaminants and to study their physical properties.
So, what are the main activities or tasks carried out in this project?
- Developing Maxwell-Bloch numerical codes, as well as studying the propagation of intense infrared plasma lasers through plasma channels —using Particle-in-Cell codes (PIC)— and atomic processes in plasmas
- Developing preprocessing and postprocessing tools to study the data generated by the numerical codes
- Using the previous numerical codes to study the amplification of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in nitrogen plasma filaments