CARS from Lift-Off to Re-Entry

Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) has been particularly useful for making temperature measurements in flames. A majority of the CARS instruments is used in studies of small-scale burners, piston engines, and even furnaces and boilers of industrial size. Occasional investigations of species concentrations and rotational and vibrational temperatures in rarefied gases have also been conducted. In the area of aerospace research, one must tackle very delicate problems in all of these fields. For instance, it is particularly difficult to investigate cryogenic rocket motor combustion, hypersonic flight aerothermochemistry, or the elaboration of refractory materials by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD).