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Laser-induced water condensation in air

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 451–456 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Triggering rain on demand is an old dream of mankind, with a huge potential socio-economical benefit. To date, efforts have mainly focused on cloud-seeding using silver salt particles. We demonstrate that self-guided ionized filaments generated by ultrashort laser pulses are also able to induce water-cloud condensation in the free, sub-saturated atmosphere. Potential contributing mechanisms include photo-oxidative chemistry and electrostatic effects. As well as revealing the potential for influencing or triggering water precipitation, laser-induced water condensation provides a new tool for the remote sensing of nucleation processes in clouds.

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Figure 1: Laser-induced condensation in an atmospheric cloud chamber (T = −24 °C and RH = 230%).
Figure 2: Laser-induced condensation in a sub-saturated atmospheric cloud chamber (T = 60 °C, RH = 75–85%), observed through the scattered signal at 90°.
Figure 3: Laser-induced condensation experiment in the atmosphere.
Figure 4: Atmospheric diffusion chamber for laboratory experiments.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge J. Kirkby of CERN for fruitful discussions, I. Sorge of Institut für Meteorologie, FU-Berlin, Germany, for providing weather data, and T. L. Kucsera (GEST) at NASA/Goddard for back-trajectories (available at the aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov website). This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Project ANR-05-Blan-0187), the Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique (FNS, grant nos. 200021-116198 and 200021-125315), and the Swiss Secrétariat d'État à l'Éducation et à la Recherche in the framework of the COST P18 project ‘The Physics of Lightning Flash and its Effects’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teramobile, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, Berlin, D-14195, Germany

    Philipp Rohwetter, Kamil Stelmaszczyk, Walter M. Nakaema, Manuel Queißer & Ludger Wöste

  2. Teramobile, GAP, Université de Genève, 20 rue de l'Ecole de Médecine, Genève 4, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Jérôme Kasparian, Stefano Henin, Yannick Petit & Jean-Pierre Wolf

  3. Teramobile, Université Lyon 1; CNRS; LASIM UMR 5579, bâtiment A. Kastler,

    Zuoqiang Hao, Noëlle Lascoux, Rami Salamé & Estelle Salmon

  4. CNRS, 43 Boulevard du 11 novembre 1918, Villeurbanne Cedex, F-69622, France

    Zuoqiang Hao, Noëlle Lascoux, Rami Salamé & Estelle Salmon

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  1. Philipp Rohwetter
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  13. Jean-Pierre Wolf
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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. More specifically, P.R., J.K., K.S., L.W. and J.-P.W. conceived and designed the study. P.R., K.S., Z.H., S.H., N.L., W.N., Y.P., M.Q., R.S. and E.S. performed the experiments. P.R., J.K. and K.S. analysed the data, and J.K., L.W. and J.-P.W. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jérôme Kasparian.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rohwetter, P., Kasparian, J., Stelmaszczyk, K. et al. Laser-induced water condensation in air. Nature Photon 4, 451–456 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.115

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