Picosecond anti-Stokes generation in a photonic-crystal fiber for interferometric CARS microscopy

We generate tunable picosecond anti-Stokes pulses by four-wave mixing of two picosecond pump and Stokes pulse trains in a photonic-crystal fiber. The visible, spectrally narrow anti-Stokes pulses with shifts over 150 nm are generated without generating other spectral features. As a demonstration, we employ the generated anti-Stokes pulses as reference pulses in an interferometric coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering imaging experiment showing that interpulse coherence among the pump, Stokes and anti-Stokes beams is retained. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.