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| Home > Articles > Published articles > A 1.8 m Class Pathfinder Raman LIDAR for the Northern Site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory-Performance |
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (Institut de Física d'Altes Energies) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (Institut de Física d'Altes Energies) (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (Institut de Física d'Altes Energies) (University of Nova Gorica) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (Institut de Física d'Altes Energies) (University of Nova Gorica) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física) (University of Nova Gorica) (University of Nova Gorica)
| Date: | 2025 |
| Abstract: | The Barcelona Raman LIDAR (BRL) will provide continuous monitoring of the aerosol extinction profile along the line of sight of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). It will be located at its Northern site (CTAO-N) on the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos. This article presents the performance of the pathfinder Barcelona Raman LIDAR (pBRL), a prototype instrument for the final BRL. Power budget simulations were carried out for the pBRL operating under various conditions, including clear nights, moon conditions, and dust intrusions. The LIDAR PreProcessing (LPP) software suite is presented, which includes several new statistical methods for background subtraction, signal gluing, ground layer and cloud detection and inversion, based on two elastic and one Raman lines. Preliminary test campaigns were conducted, first close to Barcelona and later at CTAO-N, albeit during moonlit nights only. The pBRL, under these non-optimal conditions, achieves maximum ranges up to about 35 km, range resolution of about 50 m for strongly absorbing dust layers, and 500 m for optically thin clouds with the Raman channel only, leading to similar resolutions for the LIDAR ratios and Ångström exponents. Given the reasonable agreement between the extinction coefficients obtained from the Raman and elastic lines independently, an accuracy of aerosol optical depth retrieval in the order of 0. 05 can be assumed with the current setup. The results show that the pBRL can provide valuable scientific results on aerosol characteristics and structure, although not all performance requirements could be validated under the conditions found at the two test sites. Several moderate hardware improvements are planned for its final upgraded version, such as gated PMTs for the elastic channels and a reduced-power laser with a higher repetition rate, to ensure that the data acquisition system is not saturated and therefore not affected by residual ringing. |
| Grants: | European Commission 101131928 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2021/SGR-00607 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2022-139117NB-C41 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2022-139117NB-C43 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PRE2020-093561 |
| Rights: | Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.  |
| Language: | Anglès |
| Document: | Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada |
| Subject: | Raman LIDAR ; Aerosols ; Atmospheric effects ; Gamma-ray astrophysics ; Licel ; Power budget ; Signal gluing ; LIDAR ratio ; Calima ; La Palma |
| Published in: | Remote sensing (Basel), Vol. 17, Issue 11 (June 2025) , art. 1815, ISSN 2072-4292 |
