title: Compression of fiber supercontinuum pulses to the Fourier-limit in a high-numerical-aperture focus.
abstract: A multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) adaptively and automatically compensates the combined phase distortion from a fiber supercontinuum source, a spatial light modulator pulse shaper, and a high-NA microscope objective, allowing Fourier-transform-limited compression of the supercontinuum pulses at the focus of the objective. A second-harmonic-generation-based method is employed to independently validate the transform-limited compression. The compressed pulses at the focus of the objective have a tunable duration of 10.8-38.9 fs (FWHM), a central wavelength of ~1020 nm, an average power of 18-70 mW, and a repetition rate of 76 MHz, permitting the application of this source to nonlinear optical microscopy and coherently controlled microspectroscopy.
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. htu@illinois.edu
authors.forename: Haohua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Dmitry
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Turchinovich
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boppart
mesh_terms: D005583:Fourier Analysis; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D055620:Optical Phenomena; D015203:Reproducibility of Results