Broadband tunable Raman soliton self-frequency shift to mid-infrared band in a highly birefringent microstructure fiber**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61405172, 61405173, and 61275093), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province, China (Grant No. F2014203194), the College Science Research Program of Hebei Province, China (Grant No. QN20131044), and the Program of Independent Research for

Abstract

Raman soliton self-frequency shifted to mid-infrared band (λ > 2 μm) has been achieved in an air-silica microstructure fiber (MF). The MF used in our experiment has an elliptical core with diameters of 1.08 and 2.48 μm for fast and slow axis. Numerical simulation shows that each fundamental orthogonal polarization mode has two wide-spaced λZDW and the λZDW pairs located at 701/2110 nm and 755/2498 nm along the fast and slow axis, respectively. Using 810-nm Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser as pump, when the output power varies from 0.3 to 0.5 W, the furthest red-shift Raman solitons in both fast and slow axis shift from near-infrared band to mid-infrared band, reaching as far as 2030 and 2261 nm. Also, mid-infrared Raman solitons can always be generated for pump wavelength longer than 790 nm if output pump power reaches 0.5 W. Specifically, with pump power at 0.5 W, the mid-infrared soliton in slow axis shifts from 2001 to 2261 nm when the pump changes from 790 nm to 810 nm. This means only a 20 nm change of pump results in 260 nm tunability of a mid-infrared soliton.