Sensitivity enhancement of fiber-laser-based stimulated Raman scattering microscopy by collinear balanced detection technique.
We propose the collinear balanced detection (CBD) technique for noise suppression in fiber laser (FL)-based stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy. This technique reduces the effect of laser intensity noise at a specific frequency by means of pulse splitting and recombination with a time delay difference. We experimentally confirm that CBD can suppress the intensity noise of second harmonic (SH) of Er-FL pulses by 13 dB.The measured noise level including the thermal noise is higher by only ~1.4 dB than the shot noise limit. To demonstrate SRS imaging, we use 4-ps SH pulses and 3-ps Yb-FL pulses, which are synchronized subharmonically with a jitter of 227 fs. The effectiveness of the CBD technique is confirmed through SRS imaging of a cultured HeLa cell.
Division of Advanced Science and Biotechnology, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. nose@photonics.mls.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
Keisuke
K
Nose
Yasuyuki
Y
Ozeki
Tatsuya
T
Kishi
Kazuhiko
K
Sumimura
Norihiko
N
Nishizawa
Kiichi
K
Fukui
Yasuo
Y
Kanematsu
Kazuyoshi
K
Itoh
D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007834:Lasers; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman / Q000295:instrumentation*