Supercontinuum

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

Optimization of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers for pulse compression

Abstract: A theoretical study of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber and its application to pulse compression is presented. The evolution of the spectrum can be divided into three stages: initial broadening below a certain threshold propagation distance, dramatic broadening to a supercontinuum at a threshold distance, and, finally, saturation of the spectral width on propagation. It is found that the group delay and group-delay dispersion of the supercontinum are sensitive to the input pulse peak power after further propagation at the third stage. Fluctuations from the input pulse are amplified and translated into fluctuations and time shift of the compressed pulses. There exists an optimum compressed distance at which compressed pulses with negligible fluctuation and time shift can be obtained.

Micrometer axial resolution OCT for corneal imaging

Abstract: An optical coherence tomography (OCT) for high axial resolution corneal imaging is presented. The system uses 375 nm bandwidth (625 to 1000 nm) from a broadband supercontinuum light source. The system was developed in free space to minimize image quality degradation due to dispersion. A custom-designed spectrometer based on a Czerny Turner configuration was implemented to achieve an imaging depth of 1 mm. Experimentally measured axial resolution was 1.1 μm in corneal tissue and had a good agreement with the theoretically calculated resolution from the envelope of the spectral interference fringes. In vivo imaging was carried out and thin corneal layers such as the tear film and the Bowman’s layer were quantified in normal, keratoconus, and contact lens wearing eyes, indicating the system’s suitability for several ophthalmic applications.

Characterizations of supercontinuum light source for WDM millimeter-wave-band radio-on-fiber systems

Abstract: We qualitatively evaluate for the first time phase-noise characteristics of radio-frequency carriers of a supercontinuum generator and prove to be promising as the multiwavelength light source for wavelength-division-multiplexed millimeter-wave-band radio-on-fiber systems.

High-spectral-flatness mid-infrared supercontinuum generated from a Tm-doped fiber amplifier

Abstract: Broadband mid-infrared supercontinuum pulses were generated directly from a short piece of active fiber in a single-mode Tm-doped fiber amplifier. The broadband mid-infrared pulses have an extremely high spectral flatness with ∼600 nm FWHM bandwidth (from 1.9 μm to 2.5 μm), >15 kW peak power, and >20 GW/cm2 laser peak intensity. This new approach exhibits a significantly different physical mechanism from other supercontinuum generation demonstrations in the literature, in which usually a piece of passive fiber was used for nonlinear spectral broadening. The physical mechanism for the broadband mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in this approach has been attributed to a combined effect of two superradiative processes of Tm3+ ions (i.e., the F43−H63 transition covering the 1.8∼2.1 μm spectral region and the H43−H53 transition covering the 2.2∼2.5 μm spectral region), and also nonlinear optical processes as well in the Tm-doped gain fiber. The spectra of the mid-infrared supercontinuum pulses were further broadened in a 2 m chalcogenide fiber with 20 dB bandwidth ∼1100 nm and a 3 m fluoride fiber with 20 dB bandwidth ∼2600 nm.

Numerical investigation on high power mid-infrared supercontinuum fiber lasers pumped at 3 µm

Abstract: High power mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum (SC) laser sources in the 3-12 µm region are of great interest for a variety of applications in many fields. Although various mid-IR SC laser sources have been proposed and investigated experimentally and theoretically in the past several years, power scaling of mid-IR SC lasers beyond 3 μm with infrared edges extending beyond 7 μm are still challenges because the wavelengths of most previously used pump sources are below 2 μm. These problems can be solved with the recent development of mode-locked fiber lasers at 3 μm. In this paper, high power mid-IR SC laser sources based on dispersion engineered tellurite and chalcogenide fibers and pumped by ultrafast lasers at 3 µm are proposed and investigated. Our simulation results show that, when a W-type tellurite fiber with a zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of 2.7 µm is pumped at 2.78 μm, the power proportion of the SC laser beyond 3 µm can exceed 40% and the attainable SC output power of the proposed solid-cladding tellurite fiber is one order of magnitude higher than that of existing microstructured tellurite fibers. Our calculation also predicts that a very promising super-broadband mid-IR SC fiber laser source covering two atmospheric windows and molecules' "fingerprint" region can be obtained with a microstructured As2Se3 chalcogenide fiber pumped at 2.78 μm.