Supercontinuum generation in the vacuum ultraviolet through dispersive-wave and soliton-plasma interaction in noble-gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel supercontinuum generation in noble-gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers, producing a coherent, broad spectrum from VUV to near-infrared, enabling ultrashort pulse applications.

Contribution

It uncovers a new interaction mechanism between dispersive waves and plasma-induced effects in fiber-based supercontinuum generation.

Findings

Generated supercontinuum spans 113 to 1000 nm.

Achieved VUV pulses with >50 nJ energy and >1% efficiency.

Produced tunable narrow-band VUV pulses from 120 to 200 nm.

Abstract

We report on the generation of a three-octave-wide supercontinuum extending from the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) to the near-infrared, spanning at least 113 to 1000 nm (i.e., 11 to 1.2 eV), in He-filled hollow-core kagome-style photonic crystal fiber. Numerical simulations confirm that the main mechanism is a novel and previously undiscovered interaction between dispersive-wave emission and plasma-induced blueshifted soliton recompression around the fiber zero dispersion frequency. The VUV part of the supercontinuum, which modeling shows to be coherent and possess a simple phase structure, has sufficient bandwidth to support single-cycle pulses of 500 attosecond duration. We also demonstrate, in the same system, the generation of narrower-band VUV pulses, through dispersive-wave emission, tunable from 120 to 200 nm with efficiencies exceeding 1% and VUV pulse energies in excess of 50 nJ.