White light sources

From: Steve M (noname_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:11:14 +1100

To sum up your realistic options with what you can expect, here's what I
have seen/experienced on my travels through the industry ranked in order
of output power and also cost (nothing comes for free !):

Quartz tungstan halogen filament bulb:
best you can do into SMF28 is about -65dBm per nm from 1200-1600nm. Key
is to use 1:1 imaging with suitable NA lens system

Small DC arc lamp (need something very bright, typically 100W Hg lamp
with 100 micron long arc is the best):
Can get around -52dBm per nm from 1200-1600nm into SMF28, same comments
as per QTH lamp.

Multiple LED sources:
typically around -30dBm per nm but expensive (~US$25000). Can do the
same with a couple of carefully chosen broadband SOA chips at up to
-20dBm per nm but these are pretty rare these days (not even sure who
makes broadband 1300nm SOAs any more)

Supercontinuum sources:
Can be up to the 0dBm per nm level, but there can be issues with
spectral stability over time and the pulsed nature of the light (ie its
high peak power and only moderate rep rates). Commercial units can be
had from Koheras for ~30k Euros, and Santec for ~60k US$. Can build one
yourself realtively easily (though at lower powers) using fibre from
Crystal Fibre AS (~US$2000 for the recommended 20m) and a microchip
laser from JDS (at about US$5000)

Hope that helps a bit !

Cheers,

Steve

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