We propose and demonstrate, for the first time to our best knowledge, the use of a 45° tilted fiber grating (TFG) as an infiber lateral diffraction element in an efficient and fiber-compatible spectrally encoded imaging (SEI) system. Under proper polarization control, the TFG has significantly enhanced diffraction efficiency (93.5%) due to strong tilted reflection. Our conceptually new fiber-topics-based design eliminates the need for bulky and lossy free-space diffraction gratings, significantly reduces the volume and cost of the imaging system, improves energy efficiency, and increases system stability. As a proof-of-principle experiment, we use the proposed system to perform an one dimensional (1D) line scan imaging of a customer-designed three-slot sample and the results show that the constructed image matches well with the actual sample. The angular dispersion of the 45° TFG is measured to be 0.054°/nm and the lateral resolution of the SEI system is measured to be 28 μm in our experiment.

Date Published: 29 April 2016
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9896, Optics, Photonics and Digital Technologies for Imaging Applications IV, 98960J (29 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2225140

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9896:
Optics, Photonics and Digital Technologies for Imaging Applications IV
Peter Schelkens; Touradj Ebrahimi; Gabriel Cristóbal; Frédéric Truchetet; Pasi Saarikko, Editor(s)