[OPTICAL REVIEW Vol. 6, No. 3 (1999) 167-172]
Coherent Array of White-Light Continuum Generated by Microlens Array
Wataru WATANABE, Yoshiyasu MASUDA, Hidenobu ARIMOTO and Kazuyoshi ITOH
Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1, Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871 Japan
(Received October 23, 1998; Accepted February 3, 1999)
We generated a white-light continuum array by directing femtosecond laser pulses into a liquid with a microlens array. Experimental evidence demonstrates that the spatial coherence is high within a single light source in the array. We also confirmed that all the light sources in the white-light continuum array are mutually coherent. We found that the simple self-phase modulation model cannot explain this high coherence between the white continuum sources.
Key words : white-light continuum, microlens array, self-focusing, spatial coherence