The random Raman laser—a new light source for the microcosmos
Monday, May 4, 2015 - 07:00
in Physics & Chemistry
In modern microscope imaging techniques, lasers are used as light sources because they can deliver fast pulsed and extremely high-intensity radiation to a target, allowing for rapid image acquisition. However, traditional lasers come with a significant disadvantage in that they produce images with blurred speckle patterns—a visual artifact that arises because of a property of traditional lasers called "high spatial coherence." These speckles greatly reduce image quality in wide-field microscopy, a common technique for making broad swath images of the whole side of a cell or some other part of the microscopic world in order to understand its intricate inner workings.