Interference spectroscopy with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering of noisy broadband pulses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel interference-based CARS technique for comparing Raman samples using noisy broadband pulses, eliminating the need for spectral resolution or prior spectral knowledge.

Contribution

It presents a new method for sample comparison using interference of CARS signals that works with noisy broadband pulses without spectral resolution or prior spectral information.

Findings

The method is theoretically studied and validated experimentally.

It successfully distinguishes Toluene and ortho-Xylene samples.

No spectral resolution or prior spectral knowledge is required.

Abstract

We propose a new technique for comparing two Raman active samples. The method employs optical interference of the signals generated via coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) of broadband laser pulses with noisy spectra. It does not require spectrally resolved detection, and no prior knowledge about either the Raman spectrum of the samples, or the spectrum of the incident light is needed. We study the proposed method theoretically, and demonstrate it in a proof-of-principle experiment on Toluene and ortho-Xylene samples.