FREQUENCY-TUNABLE LASER SOURCE AND METHOD FOR EMITTING A FREQUENCY-TUNABLE LASER BEAM

摘要

According to an aspect, the present description concerns a frequency-tunable laser source comprising: a set of N elementary sources (101-k), each elementary source being suitable for emitting a beam at a given central frequency (fk); an optical coupler (12) for coupling the beams emitted by each of the elementary sources in order to form a multi-spectral incident beam (B_in) regrouping all the frequencies of the N elementary sources in a same optical beam; a beam splitter (15) for forming, from the incident beam (B_in), a first beam (B₁) and a second beam (B₂), each regrouping all the frequencies of the elementary sources; a first tunable filter (16) for selecting, from the first beam (B₁), a third beam (B₃) at a first frequency (F₁); a second tunable filter (17) for selecting, from the second beam (B₂), a fourth beam (B₄) at a second frequency (); a nonlinear frequency doubling crystal (18) for generating, from the third beam at the first frequency (F_j), a fifth beam (B₅) having a frequency (F_2j) which is twice the first frequency; a nonlinear sum-frequency generation crystal (19) for generating, from the fifth beam coming from the nonlinear frequency doubling crystal and from the fourth beam at the second frequency (), a beam (B_out) having a frequency (F_2j+1) equal to the sum of twice the first frequency (F_2j) and the second frequency ().