Electro-optic swept source based on AOTF for wavenumber-linear interferometric sensing and imaging

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel electro-optic swept source for wavenumber-linear interferometric sensing and imaging applications. The electro-optic swept source based on an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) provides high environmental stability and arbitrary drive function sweeping because the electro-optic wavelength selection does not depend on a mechanical moving component to tune the output lasing wavelength. We show improved stability of the suggested electro-optic swept source, compared to a conventional swept source based on a fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter (FFP-TF). Various types of wavelength sweeping are demonstrated by applying the programmed drive function to the applied radio frequency (RF) of the AOTF.We demonstrated improved image quality of optical coherence tomography (OCT) by using the wavenumber-linear drive function of a simple triangular signal, which has a high wavenumber-linearity with an R-square value of 0.99991.