Development of As-Se tapered suspended-core fibers for ultra-broadband mid-IR

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of tapered suspended-core As-Se fibers capable of generating ultra-broadband supercontinuum in the mid-infrared range using a 2 μm pump source.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fiber structure with microstructuring that shifts zero dispersion wavelength, enabling supercontinuum generation from 1 to 10 μm in the mid-IR.

Findings

Supercontinuum generation achieved in 1-10 μm range.

Numerical simulations agree with experimental results.

Wavelength conversion demonstrated at 1.57 μm.

Abstract

We designed and developed tapered suspended-core fibers of high-purity As39Se61 glass for supercontinuum generation in the mid-IR with a standard fiber laser pump source at 2 ${\mu}$m. It was shown that microstructuring allows shifting a zero dispersion wavelength to the range shorter than 2 ${\mu}$m in the fiber waist with a core diameter of about 1 ${\mu}$m. In this case, supercontinuum generation in the 1-10 ${\mu}$m range was obtained numerically with 150-fs 100-pJ pump pulses at 2 ${\mu}$m. We also performed experiments on wavelength conversion of ultrashort optical pulses at 1.57 ${\mu}$m from Er: fiber laser system in the manufactured As-Se tapered fibers. The measured broadening spectra were in a good agreement with the ones simulated numerically.