Thorlabs’ SC4500 Mid Infrared (MIR) Supercontinuum Source is among the finalists for the 2017 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation, an international competition that recognises the best new photonics technologies. The supercontinuum source is currently featured at Photonics West booth 1701.
The SC4500 is a femtosecond-pumped source that spans over a wavelength range from approximately 1.3μm to 4.5μm and emits more than 300mW of average output power in a collimated beam. Within this range, the source’s brightness exceeds that of traditional light sources, such as glowbars and even synchrotron sources, by orders of magnitude.
Unlike supercontinuum sources pumped in the long-pulse regime, the spectrum of a femtosecond-pumped source is stable from pulse to pulse. As a result, the SC4500 provides output noise of less than 0.025 per cent RMS.
The low noise, high brightness, and laser-like beam performance of the SC4500 supercontinuum laser makes it particularly well suited for environmental sensing, biological and chemical threat identification, absorption spectroscopy, and ultrafast spectroscopy applications requiring highly sensitive measurements.