Where to Buy Optical Delay Lines

The APE ScanDelay is a variable optical delay line, allowing the introduction of a well-defined time delay into an optical path – for example, for pump–probe measurements. The delay is periodically controlled by a fast scanning shaker at a frequency of up to 20 Hz.

The heart of APE’s optical delay line series is a special linear translation stage that is supplied together with appropriate control and drive electronics. The linear drive has been designed especially for optical applications. It combines low moving mass with compactness, reaching a high speed, as well as high precision and resolution. The delay drive has frictionless movement, a large and precise travel range, and it allows for very small displacements without any stick-slip-effects.

The control electronic contains the motion driver and a quartz stabilized signal synthesizer. It can be synchronized with an external clock for a precise, phase-locked scanner movement.

With multi-MHz laser sources with pulse durations starting from 60 fs, the Dazzler becomes an ultrastable and ultrafast delay line. Multi-kHz scan rate within a compact crystal module. No moving parts, no hysteresis.

This low dispersion acousto-optic delay line opens the way to new kinds of time domain spectroscopy, frequency comb generation schemes, and high repetition rate pump–probe experiments.

G&H designs and manufactures custom modules – fiber assemblies of passive and/or active optical components integrated to provide higher functionality in a compact footprint. Customers sourcing fiber optic assemblies stay focused on their core competence while reducing time to market and development costs. Our in-depth understanding of optical component performance, combined with the use of low loss G&H products, ensures optimized designs. Advanced assembly techniques such as ribbon splicing and fiber recoating are used to provide robustness, reduce form factors, and minimize manufacturing costs.

At G&H, we take a custom module designs from specification all the way through to a manufactured product. We are expert in mechanical design for optics, fiber optics, and fiber assemblies. Our fiber assemblies include pigtailed lasers, spectrometers, optical delay lines, telescopes, and fiber collimators. The most complex assemblies can include bulk optics, fiber optics, motion control, and electronics.

Ready-to-use optical delay lines manufactured by Thorlabs include the drive system necessary for computer-controlled variation of optical path lengths. With delays up to 4,000 ps and time resolution down to 0.67 fs, these systems compliment our family of ultrafast optics and laser systems.

UltraFast Innovations (UFI) offers the pulse delay unit K2 which is specially designed for use in the XUV and soft X-ray region, where a particularly high precision and stability is required. A two-segment mirror sends IR pulses and lower divergent XUV/soft X-ray pulses to a common focus with an interferometrically precisely adjustable time delay. This allows temporal resolved experiments with pumping systems of interest either with the XUV/soft X-ray pulse and probe it with the IR or vice-versa. Based on the nature of e.g. attosecond pulses generated in the XUV/soft X-ray range by high-harmonic generation (HHG) this offers state-of-the-art highest temporal resolution for your experiments.

See us at Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science in Tacoma, Washington, USA, Oct. 08–12 (booth 310)!