Frequency-swept Brillouin spectroscopy
Abstract
Spontaneous Brillouin microscopy provides non-contact access to the viscoelastic properties of materials. Standard measurements typically utilize a single-wavelength continuous-wave laser to illuminate a specimen and excites a spontaneous Brillouin scattering signal, which is then recorded by a spectrometer. Existing Brillouin spectrometers are mostly built around either a scanning Fabry-Pérot etalon or a virtually imaged phased array (VIPA) etalon. While performing well, these setups are bulky and demand significant optical expertise to construct and maintain. Here, we propose a new approach to conducting Brillouin spectroscopy. In this approach, a frequency-swept laser excites a series of Brillouin spectra with incrementally shifted central frequencies, while a frequency picker, consisting of a narrow bandpass filter and a highly sensitive single-photon detector, sequentially records each spectral component to reconstruct the full spectrum. We demonstrate that the frequency-swept Brillouin spectroscopy can run under shot-noise limited condition using standard samples. Compared with conventional spectrometers, our system features a much more compact design for portable applications and holds potential for rapid mechanical imaging through multiplexing.
Related
- Recovery of event boundaries and Brillouin frequency shift in STFT-BOTDR using variable projection with spatial response constraint
- Elastic Properties of Titan Tholins Revealed by Brillouin Spectroscopy
- Influence of pump-probe beam offset and modulation frequency on photothermal deflection spectroscopy signals in liquid sensing: A combined theoretical and experimental study
- Raman Transitions in Collinear Laser Spectroscopy for High-Precision Frequency Measurements
- Pair-Condensation Peak in Radio-Frequency Dimer-Projection Spectroscopy of a Unitary Fermi Gas
BibTeX
@misc{kang2026frequencyswept,
title = {{Frequency-swept Brillouin spectroscopy}},
author = {Lin Kang and Shahrin Jahan Jaima and Jitao Zhang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21574},
eprint = {2609.21574},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21574},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Frequency-swept Brillouin spectroscopy
AU - Lin Kang
AU - Shahrin Jahan Jaima
AU - Jitao Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21574
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21574
AB - Spontaneous Brillouin microscopy provides non-contact access to the viscoelastic properties of materials. Standard measurements typically utilize a single-wavelength continuous-wave laser to illuminate a specimen and excites a spontaneous Brillouin scattering signal, which is then recorded by a spectrometer. Existing Brillouin spectrometers are mostly built around either a scanning Fabry-Pérot etalon or a virtually imaged phased array (VIPA) etalon. While performing well, these setups are bulky and demand significant optical expertise to construct and maintain. Here, we propose a new approach to conducting Brillouin spectroscopy. In this approach, a frequency-swept laser excites a series of Brillouin spectra with incrementally shifted central frequencies, while a frequency picker, consisting of a narrow bandpass filter and a highly sensitive single-photon detector, sequentially records each spectral component to reconstruct the full spectrum. We demonstrate that the frequency-swept Brillouin spectroscopy can run under shot-noise limited condition using standard samples. Compared with conventional spectrometers, our system features a much more compact design for portable applications and holds potential for rapid mechanical imaging through multiplexing.
ER -