Thorlabs has released new versions of its 1,300nm MEMS‐VCSEL swept‐wavelength laser sources, the SL131090 and SL132120, with a coherence length of over 100mm and sweep rates of either 100kHz or 200kHz.
Based on a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) tuneable vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), these light sources include an active power control that maintains constant output power over the lifetime of the laser.
These sources can be integrated seamlessly into custom swept‐source OCT systems using provided drive electronics and trigger signals. An output digital ‘k‐clock’ signal generated by the integrated Mach‐Zehnder interferometer and drive electronics can be used as a data acquisition sampling clock, with no further resampling in k‐space required. The k‐clock signal delay and maximum output power of the laser can be user adjusted up to ±8ns and ±5 per cent, respectively.