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MEMS Based Swept Laser Source

5 years 3 months ago

Description

A MEMS-based swept laser source is formed from two coupled cavities. The first cavity includes a first mirror and a fully reflective moveable minor and operates to tune the output wavelength of the laser. The second cavity is optically coupled to the first cavity and includes an active gain medium, the first mirror and a second mirror. The second cavity further has a length substantially greater than the first cavity such that there are multiple longitudinal modes of the second cavity within a transmission bandwidth of the first cavity output.

Aspects

In accordance with embodiments of the present invention, a swept laser source is provided that includes two cavities; a large cavity and a small cavity. The large cavity includes an active gain medium and could be formed by an optical fiber, free space and/or silicon. The small cavity includes a MEMS movable mirror to tune the output wavelength. The MEMS-based swept laser source can be used, for example, in applications that require fast wavelength sweeping without restrictions on single mode operation. For example, the MEMS-based swept laser source may be incorporated into a swept source optical coherence tomography system, which can provide in-depth imaging in many fields, such as medical imaging, process and quality control, multilayer coating inspection, 3D data storage, and spectroscopic applications.

Status

Prototype

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