Fig. 2: Experimental demonstration of dissipative Kerr soliton enabled SD-OCT.

a Setup for dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) frequency comb generation based on a 1300 nm external cavity diode laser (ECDL) amplified by a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). The laser wavelength is tuned by a voltage ramp provided by the arbitrary function generator (AFG) and monitored by power meters (PM). After coupling to the chip using lensed fibers, the transmitted light intensity is displayed on an oscilloscope (OSC) and provides information about the tuning process. A tunable fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is used to suppress the pump light before sending the generated light over a fiber link to the OCT setup located in a different laboratory on the campus. b SD-OCT setup based on a fiberized interferometer with a dispersion compensated reference arm and a high-resolution spectrometer. The setup was designed for use with a broadband SLD and the DKS comb signal was inserted without further modification for imaging. c A chaotic modulation instability comb (blue) and a DKS state (green) exhibiting spectral bandwidths comparable to the commercial superluminescent diode (orange). The DKS spectrum follows the characteristic sech² profile and has a low density of avoided modal crossings. d The associated relative intensity noise (RIN) of the Kerr combs and the superluminescent diode (SLD). Note that the two Kerr comb states were generated in different resonators, as detailed in the Methods section. Here, the yellow shaded region represents the frequencies of interest for OCT measurements.