Alberto Lombardini,
Vasyl Mytskaniuk,
Siddharth Sivankutty,
Esben Ravn Andresen,
Xueqin Chen,
Jérôme Wenger,
Marc Fabert,
Nicolas Y. Joly,
Frédéric Louradour, et al.
Coherent Raman scattering microscopy is a fast, label-free, and chemically specific imaging technique that shows high potential for future in vivo optical histology. However, the imaging depth in tissues is limited to the sub-millimeter range because of absorption and scattering. Realization of coherent Raman imaging using a fiber endoscope system is a crucial step towards imaging deep inside living tissues and providing information that is inaccessible with current microscopy tools. Until now, the development of coherent Raman endoscopy has been hampered by several issues, mainly related to the fiber delivery of the excitation pulses and signal collection. Here, we present a flexible, compact, coherent Raman, and multimodal nonlinear endoscope (4.2 mm outer diameter, 71 mm rigid length) based on a resonantly scanned hollow-core Kagomé lattice double-clad fiber. The fiber design enables distortion-less, background-free delivery of femtosecond excitation pulses and back-collection of nonlinear signals through the same fiber. Sub-micrometer spatial resolution over a large field of view is obtained by combination of a miniature objective lens with a silica microsphere lens inserted into the fiber core. We demonstrate high-resolution, high-contrast coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering, and second harmonic generation endoscopic imaging of biological tissues over a field of view of 320 µm at a rate of 0.8 frames per second. These results pave the way for intraoperative label-free imaging applied to real-time histopathology diagnosis and surgery guidance.
Dispersion tuning in sub-micron tapers for third-harmonic and photon triplet generation
Jonas Hammer,
Andrea Cavanna,
Riccardo Pennetta,
Maria Chekhova,
Philip St. J. Russell,
Nicolas Joly
Precise control of the dispersion landscape is of crucial importance if optical fibers are to be successfully used for the generation of three-photon states of light—the inverse of third-harmonic generation (THG). Here we report gas-tuning of intermodal phase-matched THG in sub-micron-diameter tapered optical fiber. By adjusting the pressure of the surrounding argon gas up to 50 bars, intermodally phase-matched third-harmonic light can be generated for pump wavelengths within a 15 nm range around 1.38 μm. We also measure the infrared fluorescence generated in the fiber when pumped in the visible and estimate that the accidental coincidence rate in this signal is lower than the predicted detection rate of photon triplets
Contact
Research Group Nicolas Joly
Professor for Photonics Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
and
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light Staudtstr. 2 91058 Erlangen, Germany
