Spatially and temporally polarization shaped laser pulses for two-photon excited fluorescence

We present simultaneous spatial and temporal polarization pulse shaping for two-photon excited fluorescence of dyes. A temporal pulse shaper and a subsequent spatial pulse shaper are used to generate laterally and axially tailored two-photon excited fluorescence profiles. The induced fluorescence is recorded for different polarization directions by utilizing the anisotropy of the dyes embedded in glycerol. We achieve an increased fluorescence contrast between different dyes by employing specific polarization shaped laser pulses and by taking polarization dependent emission into account. This versatile pulse shaping method is prospective for novel biophotonic imaging.