Method to correct the distortion caused by amplified stimulated emission as motivated by LIF-based flow diagnostics

Amplified stimulated emission (ASE) represents a significant issue in two-photon laser-induced fluorescence (TPLIF). The ASE effects are nonlinear and nonlocal, i.e., the ASE effects distort the LIF signal nonlinearly, and the distortion at one location depends on conditions at other locations. In this sense, the ASE effects pose a greater challenge to quantitative TPLIF than quenching and ionization. This work therefore seeks a method to correct such distortion. The method uses two LIF measurements, one with low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and negligible ASE distortion and another with high SNR but significant distortion, to generate a faithful measurement with high SNR. Extensive simulations were performed to evaluate the performance of this method for practical applications. c 2012 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 300.2530, 300.6420, 120.1740.