Experimental demonstration of multi-watt CW supercontinuum tailoring in photonic crystal fibers

TL;DR

This paper experimentally shows how to control the spectral broadening of continuous-wave supercontinuum in photonic crystal fibers with two zero-dispersion wavelengths, enabling tailored spectra for specific applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to tailor supercontinuum spectra by using fibers with two zero-dispersion wavelengths pumped by a 1064 nm laser.

Findings

Spectral broadening can be controlled via fiber dispersion properties.

The spectrum is bounded by two dispersive waves.

Bandwidth and spectral power density are tunable.

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the spectral broadening of CW supercontinuum can be controlled by using photonic crystal fibers with two zero-dispersion wavelengths pumped by an Yb fiber laser at 1064 nm. The spectrum is bounded by two dispersive waves whose spectral location depends on the two zero-dispersion wavelengths of the fiber. The bandwidth of the generated spectrum and the spectral power density may thus be tailored for particular applications, such as high-resolution optical coherence tomography or optical spectroscopy.