Wan Yuan, Li Zhihao, Liu Zexu, Yang Yang, Wang Hongzhen, Liu Xianlong, Cai Yangjian
Shandong Provincial Engineering and Technical Center of Light Manipulations, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optics and Photonic Device, School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China.
Joint Research Center of Light Manipulation Science and Photonic Integrated Chip of East China Normal University and Shandong Normal University, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
Nanophotonics. 2023 Nov 2;12(23):4307-4317. doi: 10.1515/nanoph-2023-0484. eCollection 2023 Nov.
A light source with narrowband, sufficient brightness, and low spatial coherence is required for certain applications such as optical imaging and free-space optical communication. In this study, our focus was to investigate a novel imaging laser source, specifically a low-threshold random laser enhanced by TiN nanoparticles. The results demonstrate that the random laser spectrum exhibits an impressive bandwidth of 0.23 nm, accompanied by an incredibly low spatial coherence factor of merely 0.15. Due to the low spatial coherence of random laser, the speck contrast is less than 0.02 when the light passes through a scattering system. Notably, when compared to traditional lasers, the use of a random laser yields significantly superior imaging quality in both scatterless and complex scattering environments. This finding highlights the immense potential of the random laser as a narrowband and low spatial coherence laser source for robust speckle-free imaging applications, particularly in environments with intricate scattering phenomena. Furthermore, this breakthrough can be extended to various other domains, including free-space optical communication.
对于诸如光学成像和自由空间光通信等某些应用而言，需要一种具有窄带、足够亮度和低空间相干性的光源。在本研究中，我们的重点是研究一种新型成像激光源，具体而言是一种由氮化钛纳米颗粒增强的低阈值随机激光。结果表明，随机激光光谱展现出令人印象深刻的0.23纳米带宽，同时伴随着仅为0.15的极低空间相干因子。由于随机激光的低空间相干性，当光通过散射系统时，散斑对比度小于0.02。值得注意的是，与传统激光相比，在无散射和复杂散射环境中，使用随机激光都能产生显著更优的成像质量。这一发现凸显了随机激光作为一种窄带且低空间相干性的激光源，在稳健的无散斑成像应用中，尤其是在具有复杂散射现象的环境中的巨大潜力。此外，这一突破可扩展到包括自由空间光通信在内的各种其他领域。
