CARS imaging with a new 532-nm synchronously pumped picosecond OPO

Edlef Büttner; Silvia Carrasco; Conor L. Evans; Feruz S. Ganikhanov; Johannes G. Herbst; Daniel Kopf; Ingo Rimke; Sunney Xie

doi:10.1117/12.700072

10 February 2007 CARS imaging with a new 532-nm synchronously pumped picosecond OPO

Edlef Büttner, Silvia Carrasco, Conor L. Evans, Feruz S. Ganikhanov, Johannes G. Herbst, Daniel Kopf, Ingo Rimke, Sunney Xie

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6442, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences VII; 64420C (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.700072
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2007, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

A new, synchronously pumped picosecond OPO for CARS microscopy is presented. It is based on non-critically phasematched interaction in LBO pumped by a frequency-doubled modelocked Nd:Vanadat laser at 532 nm. Within the parametric process a tuneable pair of two different wavelengths in the NIR range is generated (Signal <680 ...990 nm, Idler 1150...>2450 nm). In this system they are extracted from the cavity at the same mirror and therefore propagating collinear at the same beam path. Due to the mechanism of their generation there is no jitter between Signal and Idler. Though the wavelengths are different the GVD is negligible for this picosecond pulse duration. As a result the two pulse trains are spatially and temporally perfectly matched. The pulses generated are close to transform limit with about 5-6 ps pulse duration, excellent beam quality (M² < 1,1) and high pointing stability. The output power for Signal and Idler is about 1 W each @ 4 W pump power. The tuning mechanism is split into two parts - temperature tuning for rough variations and fast angular BRF tuning for the fine adjustment of the output wavelength. The perfect spatial and temporal overlap make the described OPO an ideal and nearly hands-free laser source for CARS microscopy with a tuneable energy difference 1,400 ... >10,000 cm^-1. The absolute wavelength range is resulting in high penetration depth and low photo damage of the analyzed samples. Finally some CARS-images are presented and the latest results and methods for further sensitivity enhancements are shown.

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Edlef Büttner, Silvia Carrasco, Conor L. Evans, Feruz S. Ganikhanov, Johannes G. Herbst, Daniel Kopf, Ingo Rimke, and Sunney Xie "CARS imaging with a new 532-nm synchronously pumped picosecond OPO", Proc. SPIE 6442, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences VII, 64420C (10 February 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.700072

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