Spectral interferometric coherent Raman imaging.

We propose a low-background and sensitive coherent Raman imaging technique that uses selective excitation of Raman levels with chirped pulses from a single femtosecond laser. The proposed scheme uses spectral interferometric detection to obtain the real and imaginary parts of chi(3) simultaneously. We combine three advantages desirable for microscopy namely, use of single femtosecond laser, suppression of non-resonant background, and measurement of complex resonant Raman chi(3).