Soliton blue-shift in tapered photonic crystal fiber

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that solitons in tapered photonic crystal fibers experience a significant blue shift due to the changing dispersion landscape, leading to wavelength translation and radiation emission, confirmed by experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup with tapered fibers showing soliton blue-shift driven by dispersion variation, supported by numerical simulations.

Findings

Solitons shift over 400 nm towards shorter wavelengths.

Strong UV and IR radiation emission observed.

Experimental results align with numerical simulations.

Abstract

We show that solitons undergo a strong blue shift in fibers with a dispersion landscape that varies along the direction of propagation. The experiments are based on a small-core photonic crystal fiber, tapered to have a core diameter that varies continuously along its length, resulting in a zero-dispersion wavelength that moves from 731 nm to 640 nm over the transition. The central wavelength of a soliton translates over 400 nm towards shorter wavelength. This accompanied by strong emission of radiation into the UV and IR spectral region. The experimental results are confirmed by numerical simulation.