Development of Semiconductor Lasers for Absorption Spectroscopy

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on the development of next generation Tunable Diode Laser (TLD) absorption spectrometers that should be compact, low-power consumption, and low-cost for deployment in many future Earth and planetary missions. Such capability is of particular interest for future mission opportunities for Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Europa, and their moons for the detection of biogenic gases and their isotope ratios. The Advanced Microfabrication and Optoelectronics Group at JPL is accepting applications at the post doctoral level to design, fabricate, and characterize advanced semiconductor lasers for application in spectroscopy and LIDAR. For spectroscopy, low power consumption room temperature 4-10 micron quantum cascade lasers are currently being developed. For LIDAR applications, extremely stable frequency, narrow line width optically or electrically pumped semiconductor lasers in the 2.0-3.0 um wavelength are needed. The candidate will work within a small team developing laser diodes in the 2.0-3.0 micron range and low power consumption quantum cascade laser in the 4.0-10.0 micron wavelength.