Hybrid fs/ps CARS for sooting and particle-laden flames

We report the application of ultrafast rotational coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) for temperature and relative oxygen concentration measurements in the plume emanating from a burning aluminized ammonium perchlorate propellant strand. Combustion of these metal-based propellants is a particularly hostile environment for laserbased diagnostics, with intense background luminosity, scattering and beam obstruction from hot metal particles that can be as large as several hundred microns in diameter. CARS spectra that were previously obtained using nanosecond pulsed lasers in an aluminumparticle- seeded flame are examined and are determined to be severely impacted by nonresonant background, presumably as a result of the plasma formed by particulateenhanced laser-induced breakdown. Introduction of fs/ps laser pulses enables CARS detection at reduced pulse energies, decreasing the likelihood of breakdown, while simultaneously providing time-gated elimination of any nonresonant background interference. Temperature probability densities and temperature/oxygen correlations were constructed from ensembles of several thousand single-laser-shot measurements from the fs/ps rotational CARS measurement volume positioned within 3 mm or less of the burning propellant surface. Preliminary results in canonical flames are presented using a hybrid fs/ps vibrational CARS system to demonstrate our progress towards acquiring vibrational CARS measurements for more accurate temperatures in the very high temperature propellant burns.