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US 9,804,028 B2Granted
External cavity laser source
AssigneeSpectral Sciences, Inc.
InventorPajo Vukovic-Cvijin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A tunable laser source that includes multiple gain elements and uses a spatial light modulator in an external cavity to produce spectrally tunable output is claimed. Several designs of the external cavity are described, targeting different performance characteristics and different manufacturing costs for the device. Compared to existing devices, the tunable laser source produces high output power, wide tuning range, fast tuning rate, and high spectral resolution.
Claims15
A sensor system, comprising:
- (a) a frequency agile tunable laser that has an external cavity and an output, the laser comprising:
- (i) one or more tunable gain elements providing sources of optical radiation at different wavelengths;
- (ii) a spectral dispersion device acting on the radiation produced by the gain elements to produce radiation dispersed into separate wavelengths;
- and
- (iii) a spatial light modulator (SLM) defining a plurality of programmable sub-apertures that determine the wavelengths of the laser output, where the laser output is provided to a sample;
- (b) a control system that applies a mathematical transform to the SLM to generate a detection filter for an analyte in the sample, the detection filter comprising a set of laser output wavelengths with defined intensities;
- and
- a detector that collects laser output after its exposure to the sample.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.