スーパーコンティニューム光を用いたコヒーレントラマン分光

抄録

Ultrabroad supercontinuum is generated when ultrashort laser pulses are injected into a photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Owing to the low threshold for the supercontinuum generation, the experimental setups have been significantly simplified by PCFs. We have applied the PCF-based supercontinuum light source to develop unique coherent Raman spectrometers. In the present paper, I would introduce two coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) systems, namely femtosecond CARS spectroscopy and ultrabroadband multiplex CARS microspectroscopy, both of which require only a single Ti:sapphire oscillator as a laser source. The former allows us to investigate vibrational dynamics in real time, while the latter provides molecular specific multi-color images for biological samples with high speed. In particular, we have successfully visualized the mitosis process of living fission yeast cells at the molecular level.