Compression of fiber supercontinuum pulses to the Fourier-limit in a high-numerical-aperture focus

A multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) adaptively and automatically compensates the combined phase distortion from a fiber supercontinuum source, a spatial light modulator pulse shaper, and a high-NA microscope objective, allowing Fourier-transform-limited compression of the supercontinuum pulses at the focus of the objective.

A second-harmonic-generation-based method is employed to independently validate the transform-limited compression. The compressed pulses at the focus of the objective have a tunable duration of 10:8–38:9 fs (FWHM), a central wavelength of ∼1020nm, an average power of 18–70mW, and a repetition rate of 76MHz, permitting the application of this source to nonlinear optical microscopy and coherently controlled microspectroscopy.