Monday,
March 25, 12:30 p.m. PSA 304
Aaron Luttman
National Security Technologies, LLC, Las Vegas, NV
Computational Methods for Analyzing and Quantifying Uncertainties in Photonic Doppler Velocimetry
Abstract
Laser interferometry is a method of determining the motion of a dynamic surface by computing the Doppler shift in the laser light reflected off the surface, using voltages measured on an oscilloscope. Photonic Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) is among the newest interferometric systems for measuring extreme velocities of surfaces, up to 70 km/s, but a classical theory is generally used to determine surface position from the measured voltages. These methods involve numerically solving an ill-posed inverse problem that suffers from several pathologies, like low signal-to-noise ratios and a need to know the angle of incidence of the laser light on the surface. In this talk we will present the problem of surface position reconstruction from PDV measurements, along with some of the mathematical theory and the most recent statistical methods for estimating the uncertainties in the computations. We will also present results of laboratory tests for benchmarking PDV against high-speed photography and how the two diagnostics compare.
