Development of a Widely Tunable All Fiber Laser Source for Raman Spectroscopy/Microscopy

Abstract

Raman microscopy is an important tool for a variety of applications, but the current laser sources used for this technology make the availability of these systems uncommon. Current laser sources are simply too complicated and expensive, taking up the footprint of an entire optics table and costing up to $500,000. There is a strong need for a simpler laser architecture which can still meet the resolution and tunability requirements of current systems. In this thesis, I describe the progress made toward developing such a laser source in the Ultrafast Fiber Lasers and Non-Linear Optics group and the College of Optical Sciences. We demonstrate promising performance results and identify areas of improvement that will soon enable our group to have a high performing Raman microscope.