Optical coherence tomography with a nonlinear interferometer

Abstract

We derive what is the signal and the sensitivity of a nonlinear interferometer (Mach-Zehnder or Michelson), that is a novel approach to perform Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). The physical idea behind this goes back to seminal work done by L. Mandel?s group in 1991 [1]. We demonstrate that the use of input coherent light improve the strength of the detected signal in terms of intensity, noise and sensitivity. Finally, we present the counterintuitive differences between considering a single frequency beam or a beam with a certain bandwidth.