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

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段研究项目将开发两种新型超短激光脉冲设备。每一个都将为研究人员解决一个重要的问题，这些研究人员将使用令人兴奋的新型超短激光脉冲技术进行成像、微加工、外科手术、电信、化学反应控制、时域光谱学和许多其他应用。这类应用最好使用最短的脉冲，但目前使用的是更长的脉冲，因为这些脉冲在经过许多光学元件到达最终目的地的途中自然会变长。使用四个棱镜（或两个棱镜和一个镜子）的脉冲压缩器解决了这个问题，但它们很笨重，而且有引入其他扭曲的倾向，使它们难以商业化。这项研究将开发一种优雅，易于使用的单棱镜脉冲压缩器，它更简单，更紧凑，更便宜，并且也自然地免受当前两棱镜和四棱镜设计的问题扭曲。脉冲压缩器将极大地有利于多光子显微镜-在全球1000多个生物实验室中使用，并将显著提高图像灵敏度和分辨率。现在使用超短脉冲的微机械加工和新的眼科手术技术也需要尽可能短的脉冲。此外，电信和化学研究人员将他们的脉冲塑造成可能极其复杂的波形，目前还无法测量它们，但这种光谱干涉仪也可以测量复杂形状的脉冲，也将满足这一需求。

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.