Analysis of photonic crystal fiber with silicon core for efficient supercontinuum generation

Abstract

Silicon is a widely used material due to its strong properties especially low loss and high nonlinearity in the wavelength range 1.2–6 μm. Also, photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have been extensively involved in producing spectral light broadening in the literature. Here we report supercontinuum generation (SCG) over the wavelength range 1000–3000 nm from a silicon-core/silica-cladding PCF with length of 10 mm. The proposed PCF produces light broadening at both telecommunication wavelengths 1.3 μm and 1.55 μm as well as at the zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW = 2.0 μm). The effect of altering the core size, pump power and crystal parameters on the generated spectra is discussed. It is found that the SC spectra wide is increased by 715 ± 50 nm by increasing the pump wavelength from 1.3 μm to 2.0 μm. Further, the achieved SC spectra with broadening bandwidths of 892–1659 ± 50 nm has more than double the broadening of various silicon on insulator (SOI) waveguides with bandwidths range 330 nm–990 nm.