Broadband supercontinuum generation from 600 to 5400 nm in a tapered fluorotellurite fiber pumped by a 2010 nm femtosecond fiber laser

Abstract

We demonstrate broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation from 600 to 5400 nm in a tapered fluorotellurite fiber pumped by a 2010 nm femtosecond fiber laser. All-solid fluorotellurite fibers with a core diameter of ∼6 μm are fabricated by using a rod-in-tube method. Tapered fluorotellurite fibers with an untapered region length of ∼2 cm and a tapered transition region length of ∼1.05 cm are prepared by employing an elongation machine. By using the tapered fiber as the nonlinear medium and a 2010 nm femtosecond fiber laser as the pump source, SC generation from 600 to 5400 nm is obtained, the 30 dB bandwidth of the generated SC light is about 3600 nm, and the corresponding output power is about 0.85 W for a launched average pump power of ∼1.57 W. The spectral broadening in the tapered fiber is caused by higher order soliton compression, Raman soliton, and blue-shifted and red-shifted dispersive wave generation. Our results show that fluorotellurite fibers are promising nonlinear media for generating broadband SC light expanding from visible to 5400 nm.