Lefrancois, SimonFu, DanHoltom, Gary R.Kong, LingjieWadsworth, William J.Schneider, PatrickHerda, RobertZach, ArminXie, XiaoliangWise, Frank W.2013-03-122012Lefrancois, Simon, Dan Fu, Gary R. Holtom, Lingjie Kong, William J. Wadsworth, Patrick Schneider, Robert Herda, Armin Zach, X. Sunney Xie, and Frank W. Wise. 2012. Fiber four-wave mixing source for coherent anti-strokes Raman scattering microscopy. Optics Letters 37(10): 1652-54.0146-95921539-4794http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10386978We present a fiber-format picosecond light source for coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy. Pulses from an Yb-doped fiber amplifier are frequency-converted by four-wave mixing in normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber to produce a synchronized two-color picosecond pulse train. We show that seeding the four-wave mixing process overcomes the deleterious effects of group-velocity mismatch and allows efficient conversion into narrow frequency bands. The source generates more than 160 mW of nearly-transform-limited pulses tunable from 775 to 815 nm. High-quality coherent Raman images of animal tissues and cells acquired with this source are presented.en-USJournal Article2013-03-1210.1364/OL.37.001652