Omicron LightHUB – the industry standard in multi-laser combiners

15 Jun 2023

Omicron’s LightHUB® multi-laser combiner range has become an industry standard for the world’s fluorescence microscopy community. Photon Lines Ltd, who recently celebrated it’s 20^th anniversary, have worked with Omicron almost since the beginning, and during that period they have received consistently great support and high quality, high performance products from their German partner.

There is a family of models, with increasing sophistication as applications demand. The most basic “workhorse” level of LightHUB® is a compact but sturdy package in three variants, enabling 2, 4 or 6 lasers to be contained within. They have a single colinear output beam, either “free space” or delivered via the popular Kineflex® fibre coupling system. All LightHUB® models offer a choice of over 30 different wavelengths, upgradeable by the end user as needs and applications evolve. Both DPSS and laser diodes are available, the latter are modified to provide a near perfect focal spot, making them ideal for applications such as confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. Capabilities include fast analogue intensity modulation with up to 1.5MHz and digital full ON/OFF modulation with a switching time of <1µs for each channel.

Heading up the lineup is the LightHUB-Ultra®, a plug-and-play laser light engine with up to 7 user upgradeable wavelengths and up to 2 fibre outputs.

Key facts for the LightHUB-Ultra®:

• Up to 7 wavelengths beam-combined and efficiently fibre coupled into one or two fibres
• One or two single-mode, polarization maintaining or multi-mode fibre coupled outputs
• Passive or active cooling with optional cooling unit
• Optional fail-safe laser safety shutter (SIL-2)
• Optional fast fibre switch

The availability in the LightHUB-Ultra® of direct and active temperature control of the laser modules and the complete laser bed, make it possible to keep the optical power levels ultra-stable. This feature guarantees reliable and repeatable results in the user’s application. The light of the various lasers is combined and coupled efficiently into one or two polarization-maintaining single-mode broadband or multi-mode fibres. The LightHUB-Ultra® offers the possibility to integrate a fast fibre-switch or a fibre splitter with defined splitting ratio.Laser modules with up to 300 milliwatt of optical output power and wavelengths between 375 and 1550nm can be used in the LightHUB® systems. Optional clean-up filters and a failsafe laser safety shutter can be directly installed in the system to adapt the system to the customer’s application and safety requirements. High-impedance modulation inputs ensure easy interfacing to external devices such as cameras, microscopes and DAC cards. The device can be conveniently controlled via the integrated USB-2.0 interface by the included software “Omicron Control Center“ (OCC) or third party software.

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