SBIR Phase II: Compressing and Measuring Ultrashort Laser Pulses in Imaging and Spectroscopy

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II research project will develop two novel ultrashort-laser-pulse devices. Each will solve an important problem for researchers that use exciting new ultrashort-laser-pulse techniques for imaging, micro-machining, surgery, telecommunications, chemical-reaction control, time-domain spectroscopy, and many other applications. Such applications work best with the shortest pulse - but currently operate with much longer ones because such pulses naturally lengthen as they pass through the many optical components on the way to their final destination. Pulse compressors, which use four prisms (or two prisms and a mirror), solve this problem, but they are unwieldy and have a tendency to introduce other distortions, making them difficult to commercialize. This research will develop an elegant, easy-to-use single prism pulse compressor, which is much simpler, more compact, and much less expensive, and is also naturally immune to the problematic distortions of current two- and four-prism designs. The pulse compressor will greatly benefit multi-photon microscopy - in use in over 1000 biological labs worldwide, and where it will significantly improve image sensitivity and resolution. Micromachining efforts and new ophthalmologic surgical techniques that now use ultrashort pulses also require the shortest possible pulses. In addition, telecommunications and chemistry researchers who shape their pulses into potentially extremely complex waveforms, currently cannot measure them, but this spectral interferometer, which can also measure complex shaped pulses, will fill this need, as well.