Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 67: Photonics III

Q 67.7: Talk

Friday, March 21, 2014, 18:00–18:15, UDL HS3038

Optimization of Photonic Crystal Fiber Based Supercontinuum Generation for Hyperspectral CARS Imaging — •Stefan Gomes da Costa, Gregor Hehl, and Andreas Volkmer — 3rd Institute of Physics, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Central to hyperspectral Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) imaging is the use of broadband supercontinuum (SC) pulses covering a spectral Raman shift range of more than 4000 cm-1. Conventionally, a SC pulse generated in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fibre (PCF) using a femtosecond seed pulse have been used together with a narrowband pump pulse in the CARS process. To optimize CARS, where the spectral width of the pump pulse corresponds to the bandwidth of the vibrational resonance of interest, matching the temporal widths of both the picosecond pump and Stokes-SC pulses is required. Here, we report on both the numerical simulation and the experimental characterization of vibrational bandwidth-matched picosecond SC-based hyperspectral CARS imaging using a single Ti:sapphire laser oscillator with near-transform-limited picosecond pulses. The spectral and temporal characteristics of both femto- and picosecond PCF-based SC generation have been investigated by means of XFROG-CARS experiments and compared with its respective SC pulse simulations. We found good agreement between experiment and theory, which allowed us to further optimize the generation of picosecond SC pulses for CARS. We will present exemplifying applications of label-free, hyperspectral 3D-CARS imaging to the noninvasive and quantitative analysis of a biological system.