Low-power Mid-IR Supercontinuum and Rogue Wave Generation in Chalcogenide Waveguides

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates low-power supercontinuum generation in the mid-infrared range using chalcogenide waveguides, showing potential for compact, coherent light sources in molecular spectroscopy and related fields.

Contribution

It introduces numerical modeling of supercontinuum generation in chalcogenide waveguides, highlighting the feasibility of low-power, broad-spectrum mid-IR light sources with simple dispersion profiles.

Findings

Successful supercontinuum generation beyond 10 μm at low pump power

Rich pulse dynamics including rogue wave events observed

Feasibility of tabletop laser schemes for mid-IR applications

Abstract

We present numerical results of supercontinuum (SC) generation in the mid-IR spectral region, specifically addressing the molecular fingerprint window ranging from 2.5 to 25 um. By solving the Generalized Nonlinear Schr\"odinger Equation (GNLSE) in a chalcogenide waveguide, we demonstrate low-power SC generation beyond 10 um from a pump at 5 um. Further, we investigate the short-pulse and CW regimes, and show that a simple linear dispersion profile, applicable to a broad range of chalcogenide media, is sufficient to account for the broad SC generation, and yield rich pulse dynamics leading to the frequent occurrence of rogue wave events. Results are encouraging as they point to the feasibility of producing bright and coherent light, by means of single low-power tabletop laser pumping schemes, in a spectral region that finds applications in such diverse areas as molecular spectroscopy, metrology and tomography, among others, and that is not easily addressable with other light sources