Four-wave mixing based light sources for real-world biomedical applications of coherent Raman microscopy

Stimulated Raman Scattering requires an extremely quiet, widely wavelength tunable laser, which, up to now, is unheard of in fiber lasers. We present a compact and maintenance-free optical parametric oscillator based on degenerate four-wave mixing in a photonic crystal fiber. By employing an all-fiber frequency and repetition rate tunable laser as a seed source, we are able to generate tunable light between 1015 and 1065 nm. After amplification and subsequent conversion in the fiber OPO, signal and idler radiation between 785 and 960 nm and 1177 and 1500 nm may be generated with a repetition rate of 9 MHz. Therefore, we are able to address Raman shifts between 910 and 3030 cm-1. An additional output provides the Stokes radiation at 18 MHz required for the SRS process, which is passively synchronized to the tunable radiation. We measure the relative intensity noise of the Stokes beam at 9 MHz to be -150 dBc enabling high speed SRS imaging with a good signal-to-noise ratio.