Suppression of ultrafast supercontinuum generation in a salivary protein

Abstract

The first studies of the propagation of ultrafast (<45 fs) pulses of intense infrared light through protein media reveal that supercontinuum (white light) generation is severely suppressed in the presence of the protein a-amylase, a potential stress marker in human saliva. The continuum suppression capacity is attributed to the electron scavenging property of the protein. ? 2007 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.