There is an increasing demand for compact sensors able to early detect hazardous chemicals, explosives, their precursors and several toxic chemical compounds. Indeed, fast and reliable standoff detection of traces of hidden hazardous or prohibited substances in solid, liquid, or vapor phase is an important issue for defence, security (potential intentional harm), and safety (potential accidental harm) applications. In this context, optical detection methods can be a real asset for situational awareness thanks to (1) their standoff, remote or at least contactless detection capability, (2) their ability to discriminate prohibited or toxic species from ambient environment since almost all organic chemical compounds exhibit strong characteristic absorbance patterns in the mid-infrared spectral range, especially in the so-called ‘fingerprint’ region between 6 and 14 µm. Standoff detection and identification, that do not require collecting and bringing the sample to the sensor for detection, are among the most wanted capabilities, but it is also one of the greatest technical challenges. The most promising techniques to fulfil the above requirements with a limited interaction (non-contaminating, non-destructive, etc.) with the analytes are those based on differential absorption backscattering spectroscopy (differential absorption LIDAR and backscatter absorption gas imaging) that require to have access to versatile broadly tunable laser sources. Since the return light decreases inversely with the distance squared, the operational needs in terms of laser energy or power strongly depend on the required detection range. In this way, in frequent scenarios where the safety distance for standoff detection and identification is typically of ~ 100 m or larger, pulsed operation, as provided by Q-switched lasers, is necessary to supply a sufficient peak power (> 100 W). Compact, robust, eyesafe, and narrow-linewidth (< 0.05 cm–1) pulsed laser sources that can be broadly tuned in the 6–14 µm spectral range are thus highly desirable for early standoff detection of hazardous chemicals and explosives. However, none of the previously developed systems, including CO2 lasers and quantum cascade lasers, satisfactorily fulfils all the above-mentioned requirements. The purpose of MUSTARD—Microlaser pUmped tunable optical Source based on parameTric conversion in GaAs for Remote Detection of hazardous chemicals and explosives—project is to develop an optical source able to provide the required specifications. MUSTARD optical source will consist of a compact optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on a NesCOPO design patented and developed by ONERA/DMPH. In order to access the 6–14 µm spectral range, the OPO will be based on an OP-GaAs non linear crystal developed at TRT, which will result in the first association of these two technologies. The OPO will be pumped by a fibered 2-µm microlaser that will also be designed and realized during the project by TRT and Teem Photonics. The combination of these three key technologies will result in a narrow linewidth tuneable mid-IR pulsed laser sources which will clearly be far above the current international state of the art and will provide a breakthrough to develop backscattering spectroscopy systems with real standoff capabilities. Such capabilities will be demonstrated through a preliminary laboratory experiment of standoff gas leak detection. The MUSTARD consortium is well balanced between a public laboratory (ONERA), a large company (Thales), and a small enterprise (Teem Photonics). This will thus help the dissemination of the knowledge and technology from the research laboratory towards the industry. It will develop the expertise of laboratories on critical laser systems, and increase the competitiveness of these two French companies on potentially large scale defence, civil security and safety markets, thus allowing the potential creation of new jobs.

Retinal laser photocoagulation is commonly used in ophtalmology to treat the macular edema. Macular edemas may result from various pathologies, the first of which is diabetic retinopathy, affecting one to two million people in France alone. The usual treatment for macular edema is a photocoagulation at the center of the retina. The interest of this treatment has been recently confirmed by several studies. However, the way this treatment is administered remains highly empirical. Increasing its precision should help one improve its efficiency while reducing undesirable side effects. The therapeutic target of the laser can be twofold: retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) or retinal vessels. Whatever the aimed target, it is impossible with current lasers to prevent some degree of damage to healthy neighbouring tissues, which can entail a permanent degradation of visual acuity. This is due to a lack of control of the localisation of the laser impact; indeed, current systems do not include a real-time visualization of the volume of tissues being photocoagulated, and the laser focusing quality is degraded by unintentional eye movements and by optical defects of the eye. Moreover, the laser treatment dose titration is currently performed empirically, with a mere visual control. Improving the accuracy of the procedure should therefore increase its efficiency and reduce collateral damages. This implies a better control of the laser impact and a better control of its effect. Retinal imaging has been revolutionized in the past ten years by the use of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and adaptive optics (AO). OCT provides a real-time high precision 3D image, and AO corrects in real-time the eye's aberrations and movements. AO is currently applied to laser beam focusing in metallurgy, to optical telecommunications, and to high-power lasers used in Physics experiments. OCT thus provides a robust imaging solution for visualizing the retina, and AO brings a sound and proven solution for focusing laser beams. The aim of this project is to build an ophthalmological laser system that integrates a real-time 3D visualization and an AO system in order to better control the laser delivery. Such a system will allow the surgeon to choose on the OCT image the impact point of the laser; the latter will be locked in real-time so that the laser impact is better defined in space, in the three dimensions. This revolution of the surgical procedure will bring considerable gains both in efficiency and time. This project will be carried all the way to the clinical evaluation of a mockup on a few patients. This particularly ambitious objective can only be met by relying on a proven and efficient partnership, which gathers the French leaders of the three technical fields involved: ONERA, leading French player of adaptive optics, internationally recognized in laser focusing applications and imaging of the human retina; Quantel Medical, world's third manufacturer of laser photocoagulation systems; CIC 1423 of the Quinze-Vingts Hospital, French national reference centre for retinal diseases. The ability to produce a genuine "3D laser bistoury" for a cost close to that of current photocoagulation systems will bring a decisive competitive advantage, thus opening a world market of several hundred units per year.

Increasing populations in more and more wide urban areas, made of heterogeneous buildings and exposed to earthquakes, are the ingredients that place urban area among the most critical elements of seismic risk. Their knowledge become then a key information to mitigate, predict and assess its vulnerability and post-seismic integrity. The variability of the response of a structure to earthquakes introduces an uncertainty in the assessment of its vulnerability but also in the estimation of damages. Often two scales of space (city or building) and three scales of time (before, during and after the earthquake) are invoked during the seismic assessment in urban areas. We propose to develop methods for assessing vulnerability and seismic damage throughout the city. Based on the use of remote data (aerial or satellite images), analysis of urban patterns will be done, integrating key structural parameters (height, shape, roof, etc.) for vulnerability assessment. The detection of changes before and after earthquakes will also be quantified in relation with observed damage. We also plan to develop tools for damage assessement at local scale, i.e. a structure, and based on evaluating its modal parameters (frequency, damping and modal shapes). Technological and algorithmic signal processing developments will be done to estimate its modal parameters for normal periods (inter-seismic), their variations during (co-seismic) and after (post-seismic) the shake, for evaluating the structural integrity. Finally a tool will be developped in order to show the vulnerability and damage in the city, that will facilitate the management and mitigation of the seismic crisis.

Optomechanics was born on the theory side in the late 70s, in the framework of high-sensitivity measurements, and especially gravitational-wave detection, when Braginsky, Caves and others discussed the impact of quantum fluctuations of light on the sensitivity of the envisioned large-scale gravitational-wave interferometers. But experimental optomechanics only appeared some 20 years later, to become a mature and very active research field only very recently, when progress in laser sources (stability and low-noise operation), micro- and nanofabrication, low-loss coatings and low-vibration cryogenics allowed optomechanical operation closer to the quantum regime. The focus can be either on the quantum properties of light (optomechanical squeezing), on the mechanical resonator (experimental observation of the mechanical quantum ground state), or on both, with the ambitious goal of entanglement between a mechanical resonator and the light field, or between two mechanical resonators through radiation pressure. Our project aims for a number of milestones in the field, on every facet of optomechanics. Gathering experience and expertise among 4 different laboratories (LKB: active and pioneering group in the field, LPN: cutting-edge facilities and expertise in nanofabrication, LMA: worldwide leader in low-loss optical coatings, ONERA: international expertise in ultra-stable mechanical resonators), the collaboration established here, with expertise spanning the whole experimental process, is essential to the effective fulfilment of any particular experiment, but it has the potential as well to achieve them all. The project will help the collaboration to strengthen its current position in the international competition and to establish firm experimental foundations for future works deep into the quantum regime of optomechanics. We will take advantage of the modifications of the light inside a moving mirror cavity to demonstrate optomechanical squeezing, with unique features such as a frequency-dependent squeezed quadrature. Also, laser cooling in a high-finesse cavity will be used to demonstrate the quantum-mechanical ground state of a dedicated optomechanical resonator, taking advantage of the fact that, unlike condensed-matter systems, optomechanical resonators offer clear signatures of the ground state. Both envisioned experiments are obviously strongly related, even though they require specific optimization of the optomechanical resonator. Optomechanical properties of a different system, an optomechanical crystal with unique on-chip integration features, will be investigated as well and used to cool it to its fundamental state. On a longer term, it is worth noting that the observation of such quantum phenomena with macroscopic objects is not only of great interest from a conceptual point of view, but also is the key prerequisite for the preparation of non-classical states of motion, and, on a more technological level, for the development of micro and nanomechanical sensors with an unprecedented sensitivity, only limited by quantum noises. Applications are expected in the fields of single-molecule detection, optical switches, or in quantum hybrid systems for storage and transfer of quantum information.

Availibility of climatological databases for surface cover spectral optical properties is a challenge in many civilian themes, such as global warming, meteorological forecasting, ecophysiological processes, land surface hydrology or natural disaster assessment, and in military themes, such as trafficability, mission preparation or strategic survey. Some surface cover reflectance databases built from satellite measurements over several years, with a global coverage, are available. They are climatologically representative but the spectral band extends only from visible to 3 µm at the most. Within the framework of the MIRA PEA, a new global surface cover optical properties database was built from one year of MODIS data. This database has 9 spectral bands between 0.6 and 12.3 µm, a 8-days temporal sampling and a 500-m (1-km) spatial resolution for reflectance (emissivity). Because of the broken spectral coverage, the lack of climatological representativeness and the huge amount of data, the database is hard to process. However, it is the first step to create a global surface cover optical properties database, extending from visible to infrared (14 µm) with a climatological representativeness. The CLIPO project aim is to develop methodologies for the creation of a global surface cover optical properties database which is representative of spatial, temporal and spectral variabilities and with resolutions in agreement with civilian and military needs. These methodologies will be implemented on a globe part in order to demonstrate the project feasibility. The implementation of the final product in radiative transfer codes, like the MATISSE code developed at ONERA, leads to significant work considering the database sizing.