ABSTRACT
Although time-stretch spectroscopy is an emerging ultrafast spectroscopic technique, the applications in industrial fields have been limited due to the low output power caused by undesirable nonlinear effects occurred in a long optical fiber used for pulse chirping. Here, we developed a high-power time-stretch near infrared (NIR) spectrometer utilizing arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs). The combination of AWGs and short optical fibers allowed large amounts of chromatic dispersion to be applied to broadband supercontinuum pulses without the power limitation imposed by employing the long optical fiber. With the proposed configuration, we achieved chirped pulses with the output power of 60 mW in the 900-1300 nm wavelength region, which is about 10 times higher than conventional time-stretch spectrometers using long optical fibers. With the developed spectrometer, the NIR absorption spectra of a standard material and liquid samples were observed with high accuracy and precision within sub-millisecond measurement time even with four orders of magnitude optical attenuation by a neutral density filter. We also confirmed the quantitative spectral analysis capability of the developed spectrometer for highly scattering samples of an oil emulsion. The qualitative comparison of the measurement precision between the developed spectrometer and the previous time-stretch spectrometer was also conducted.
ABSTRACT
The spectral linewidth of a 3.28 µm difference-frequency-generation source has been reduced to 3.5 kHz using a laser linewidth transfer technique [Opt. Express21, 7891 (2013)]. We use an optical frequency comb with a broad servo bandwidth to transfer a narrow linewidth of a pump laser, a 1.06 µm Nd:YAG laser, to a signal laser, a 1.57 µm external-cavity laser diode. This source enables us to record the Lamb dip of the ν3 band R(2) E transition of methane with a molecular spectral linewidth of 21 kHz while the frequency axis is absolutely calibrated.
