Abstract
Supercontinuum (SC) generation in photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is a cutting-edge phenomenon extensively studied in recent years [1]. SC has found many scientific and technological applications. The control of the SC spectral characteristics is crucial in most of them. A pioneering attempt in this direction was reported in Ref. [2]. We point out that SC is typically generated by accessing the anomalous dispersion regime of the fiber, i.e., when the group velocity dispersion (GVD) coefficient is lower than zero, β2<0. The recent achievement of soft-glass PCFs, namely, PCFs made up of a transparent material that shows higher nonlinear response than the widely used fused silica, opens new possibilities in SC generation at the normal regime, β2>0. In this contribution we shift from the anomalous to the normal dispersion regime and this fact allows us to recognize a procedure, based on fiber-dispersion design, to control at least to some extent the spectral characteristics of the broadband SC generated by soft-glass PCFs. As a byproduct, we identify a PCF geometry that provides an ultrawide (over an octave) and very flat SC when pumped with a commercial Er-doped femtosecond fiber laser.
© 2009 IEEE
PDF ArticleMore Like This
F. G. Omenetto, N. A. Wolchover, Mackenzie Wehner, M. R. Ross, Anatoly Efimov, A. J. Taylor, V. R. K. Kumar, A. K. George, J. C. Knight, N. Joly, and P. St. J. Russell
TuI37 Biomedical Topical Meeting (BIOMED) 2006
F. G. Omenetto, N. A. Wolchover, M. R. Wehner, M. R. Ross, A. Efimov, A. J. Taylor, V. R. K. Kumar, A. K. George, J. C. Knight, N. Joly, and P. St. J. Russell
CThV4 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 2006
Juan J. Miret, Pedro Andrés, and Enrique Silvestre
OSNF8 Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and their Applications (WSOF) 2008