High Power, High Efficiency, Continuous-Wave Supercontinuum Generation using Standard Telecom Fibers

TL;DR

This paper presents a straightforward, high-power, high-efficiency supercontinuum generation method using standard telecom fibers and Raman shifting, achieving over one octave of spectral coverage with significant power output.

Contribution

The work introduces a simple, robust module for octave-spanning supercontinuum generation using standard telecom fibers and a novel Raman laser architecture with distributed feedback.

Findings

Over 1 octave spectral span (880-1900nm) achieved

Supercontinuum power ~34W with 44% efficiency

Demonstrated input wavelength agility

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple module for octave spanning continuous-wave supercontinuum generation using standard telecom fiber. This module can accept any high power Ytterbium-doped fiber laser as input. The input light is transferred into the anomalous dispersion region of the telecom fiber through a cascade of Raman shifts. A recently proposed Raman laser architecture with distributed feedback efficiently performs these Raman conversions. A spectrum spanning over 1000nm(>1 octave) from 880-1900nm is demonstrated. The average power from the supercontinuum is ~34W with a high conversion efficiency of 44%. Input wavelength agility is demonstrated with similar supercontinua over a wide input wavelength range.