Alcor

COMPACT HIGH-POWER FEMTOSECOND LASER

780, 920, 1040 and 1064 nm / < 100 fs / Up to 5 W

Spark Lasers’ ALCOR has been specifically designed for two-photon excitation. It offers clean femtosecond pulses with the highest guaranteed peak power on the market, in an unprecedented compact format and with fixed wavelengths at 780, 920, 1040 and 1064 nm. ALCOR was released in 2018 and has continuously been improved to provide the highest standard of performances and reliability. Amongst these evolutions are the availability for innovative options such as fiber delivery and Multibeam. Version 9 of ALCOR 920 has been released in 2024 with the aim to provide remarkable two-photon imaging characteristics on every microscopy experiments.

Multiphoton microscopy requires high laser peak power to achieve high image brightness. In laser technology, high peak power is provided by the combination of high pulse energy, short pulse duration and clean pulses. Two-photon fluorescence increases quadratically with average power: for instance, an average power of 2 W will produce 4 times more fluorescence than 1 W. A laser offering the combination of higher power and shorter pulse duration is highly suitable to cover the increasingly challenging experiments in Neuroscience.

Spark Lasers introduced HPC® Technology (High Pulse Contrast) in 2022 to provide maximum peak power and achieve optimal image brightness in two-photon microscopy systems. HPC® exploits fiber laser technologies to clean and shorten pulses while increasing average power. This way, ultimate peak power with remarkable average power can be produced efficiently and in a compact fiber laser.

HPC® Technology is incorporated in ALCOR 920 to offer 1.5 W or 2.5 W average power with clean pulses of < 100 fs in duration ensuring the best performance on the market for two-photon microscopy.

HPC^® technology (High Pulse Contrast) increases power while cleaning pulses.

ALCOR 920-Mini2P

THE TURNKEY LASER SOLUTION FOR MINI2P

ALCOR 920-Mini2P is a fully plug and play femtosecond laser specifically designed for 2-photon imaging in freely moving animals with Mini2P technology. Hollow core fiber is coupled directly on ALCOR laser head thanks to its remarkable range of computer controlled positive GDD precompensation : no need for external module. Mini2P fiber is equipped with a connector on the coupling side and a collimator compatible with the Mini2P miniscope. ALCOR 920-Mini2P is a truly turnkey laser solution saving research time and money : no fiber preparation, no fiber alignment, no additional equipment required to mount or couple the fiber and collimator. ALCOR 920-Mini2P is ready to be plugged into any Mini2P miniscope (not provided with the laser). Output power at Mini2P collimator can be chosen to be either 150 mW, 300 mW or 700 mW depending on your requirements.

ALCOR MULTIBEAM: MB2 OR MB4

MULTIPLE FREE SPACE OR FIBER DELIVERY OUTPUTS FROM ONE LASER

SPARK LASERS released the multibeam splitter module in November 2023, offering 2 or 4 outputs from one single laser source. Multibeam outputs can be configured free-space or fiber coupled with a redefined splitting ratio. Multibeam incorporates one modulator per output so that power of each output can be independently controlled and modulated with a bandwidth > 1 MHz. Special configurations on each output are possible: Mini2P, FLeX and/or special power ratio.