Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Across optics and photonics, excess intensity noise is often considered a liability. Here, we show that excess noise in broadband supercontinuum and superluminescent diode light sources encodes each spectral channel with unique intensity fluctuations, which actually serve a useful purpose. Specifically, we report that excess noise correlations can both characterize the spectral resolution of spectrometers and enable cross-calibration of their wavelengths across a broad bandwidth. Relative to previous methods that use broadband interferometry and narrow linewidth lasers to characterize and calibrate spectrometers, our approach is simple, comprehensive, and rapid enough to be deployed during spectrometer alignment. First, we employ this approach to aid alignment and reduce the depth-dependent degradation of the sensitivity and axial resolution in a spectrometer-based optical coherence tomography (OCT) system, revealing a new outer retinal band. Second, we achieve a pixel-to-pixel correspondence between two otherwise disparate spectrometers, enabling a robust comparison of their respective measurements. Thus, excess intensity noise has useful applications in optics and photonics.
Source: Light Science & Applications
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,975
Awards: Development, Validation and Application of Metabolic Imaging in Glaucoma, G226549197, G2400221771, G266965019, Human Brain Interferometers for Better Blood Flow Monitoring, G3987579999, G5362125200, True Sub-Micron Ocular Diagnostics with Visible Light Optical Coherence Tomography, G7904606279, G8291497219, Imaging Neuronal and Capillary Dysfunction Deep in the Rodent Brain in vivo Using 1700 NM Optical Coherence Microscopy and Tracer-Based Kinetics, G9000011351, G9000100841, G9000224989, G9000280575, G9000350149
OpenAlex ID: W3091961385