Supercontinuum

About: Supercontinuum is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7071 publications have been published within this topic receiving 127671 citations.

Ultra low-noise coherent supercontinuum amplification and compression below 100 fs in an all-fiber polarization-maintaining thulium fiber amplifier.

Abstract: We report an ultra-low noise, polarization-maintaining, ultrafast Thulium-doped all-fiber chirped pulse amplifier, seeded by a polarized all-normal dispersion (ANDi) supercontinuum (SC) driven by an ultrafast Erbium-fiber laser. The system comprises only polarization-maintaining fibers and delivers 96 fs pulses with 350 mW output power at 100 MHz, centered at 1900 nm. The integrated relative intensity noise (RIN) in the range of 10 Hz – 10 MHz is only 0.047% at the amplifier output, which is virtually identical to the RIN of the Erbium-fiber laser driving the SC. Therefore, neither the SC generation nor the amplification process introduce significant excess noise. The RIN of our system is an order of magnitude lower than similar systems previously seeded with Raman solitons. This highlights the superior noise properties of ANDi SC and their potential as ultra-low noise seed sources for broadband, high power ultrafast fiber amplifiers and frequency combs.

Enhanced high-order harmonics and an isolated short attosecond pulse generated by using a two-color laser and an extreme-ultraviolet attosecond pulse

Abstract: An efficient method to generate an isolated short attosecond pulse is presented theoretically. We show that, by adding a 0.5 fs, 62.3 nm extreme ultraviolet (xuv) attosecond pulse to a synthesized two-color field at a proper time, the harmonic intensity is effectively enhanced by 1--3 orders of magnitude compared with the two-color case and the harmonic spectrum higher than 260th order reveals an ultrabroad xuv supercontinuum. In addition, the short quantum path is selected to effectively contribute to the high order harmonics, and an isolated 40 as pulse is obtained. Our calculated results also show that, by adding a 0.5 fs, 29.6 nm xuv attosecond pulse to the synthesized two-color field at a proper time, the enhancement of the high-order harmonics and an ultrabroad xuv supercontinuum is observed, and the selection of the long quantum path can be achieved, then an isolated attosecond pulse as short as 39 as is generated.

System and method for generating supercontinuum light

Abstract: A supercontinuum light source includes a modulated pump laser, a first fiber, and a nonlinear waveguide. The modulated pump laser generates light comprising longer pulses, where a longer pulse has a temporal duration of approximately ten picoseconds or more. The first fiber breaks at least one longer pulse into shorter pulses, where a shorter pulse has a temporal duration of approximately two picoseconds or less. The first fiber at least partially operates in an anomalous group velocity dispersion regime, and the shorter pulses result from a modulational instability in the first fiber. The nonlinear waveguide spectrally broadens the shorter pulses to yield supercontinuum light, where the supercontinuum light has a spectral width of approximately 150 nanometers or more.

Low-noise multiwavelength transmitter using spectrum-sliced supercontinuum generated from a normal group-velocity dispersion fiber

Abstract: Aiming at the application of supercontinuum (SC) generated from a fiber with a normal group-velocity dispersion (GVD) to multiwavelength transmitters, we theoretically study the enhancement of optical-amplifier noise in the SC-generation and spectrum-slicing processes. We find that significant enhancement of noise is not observed in these processes. The bit error rate measurement actually shows that the power penalty induced by these processes is less than 1 dB in all spectrum-sliced channels. These results assure low noise of the multiwavelength transmitter using spectrum-sliced SC generated in a normal GVD fiber.

Seven-octave high-brightness and carrier-envelope-phase-stable light source

Abstract: High-brightness sources of coherent and few-cycle-duration light waveforms with spectral coverage from the ultraviolet to the terahertz would offer unprecedented versatility and opportunities for a wide range of applications from bio-chemical sensing1 to time-resolved and nonlinear spectroscopy, and to attosecond light-wave electronics2,3. Combinations of various sources with frequency conversion4,5 and supercontinuum generation6–9 can provide relatively large spectral coverage, but many applications require a much broader spectral range10 and low-jitter synchronization for time-domain measurements11. Here, we present a carrier-envelope-phase (CEP)-stable light source, seeded by a mid-infrared frequency comb12,13, with simultaneous spectral coverage across seven optical octaves, from the ultraviolet (340 nm) into the terahertz (40,000 nm). Combining soliton self-compression and dispersive wave generation in an anti-resonant-reflection photonic-crystal fibre with intra-pulse difference frequency generation in BaGa2GeSe6, the spectral brightness is two to five orders of magnitude above that of synchrotron sources. This will enable high-dynamic-range spectroscopies and provide numerous opportunities in attosecond physics and material sciences14,15. Using a gas-filled anti-resonant-reflection photonic-crystal fibre, a high-brightness table-top source of coherent carrier-envelope-phase-stable waveforms is demonstrated across seven octaves (340 nm to 40,000 nm) with ultraviolet peak powers up to 2.5 MW and terahertz peak powers of 1.8 MW, without the need for changing nonlinear crystals.