Thorlabs SL131090 and SL132120 MEMS-VCSEL Swept-Wavelength laser sources

Thorlabs has released next-generation versions of its 1300 nm MEMS-VCSEL Swept-Wavelength laser sources. With a coherence length of over 100 mm and sweep rates of either 100 or 200 kHz, the SL131090 and SL132120 are claimed to be the only commercially available MEMS-VCSEL laser sources on the market. Based on a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) tunable vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL), the light sources include an active power control that maintains constant output power over the lifetime of the laser.

All drive electronics and trigger signals needed to seamlessly integrate the laser sources into custom swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems are provided. An output digital ‘k-clock’ signal generated by the integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and drive electronics can be used as a data acquisition sampling clock, with no further resampling in k-space required. The k-clock signal delay and maximum output power of the laser can be user adjusted up to ±8 ns and ±5%, respectively.

Designed for integration into high-speed and long-range OCT systems requiring high sensitivity, the singlemode benchtop sources are also suitable for other applications, including metrology and spectroscopy.