<title>Chemical aerosol detection using femtosecond laser pulses</title>

Abstract

Many chemical warfare agents are dispersed as small aerosol particles. In the past, most electro-optical excitation and detection schemes have used continuous or pulsed lasers with pulse lengths ranging from nanoseconds to microseconds. In this paper, we present interesting ongoing new results on femtosecond imaging and on the time dependent solutions to the scattering problem of a femtosecond laser pulse interacting with a single small aerosol particle. Results are presented for various incident pulse lengths. Experimental imaging results using femtosecond pulses indicate that the diffraction rings present when using nanosecond laser pulses for imaging are greatly reduced when femtosecond laser pulses are used. Results are presented in terms of the internal fields as a function of time and the optical size parameter.