Design and analysis of the C6H6-filled circular photonic crystal fiber with ultra-flat dispersion for broadband supercontinuum generation with peak power of 130 W and 250 W

Abstract

This article introduces a new model of a circular silica-based photonic crystal fiber with a hollow core filled with C6H6. The difference in the air hole size and the distance between them in the first ring around the core has a profound effect on the dispersion, leading to ultra-flat dispersion with values as low as ±0.996 ps nm−1· km in wavelength range 0.74 µm. The high nonlinear coefficient of several 1000 W−1 · km−1 and the low confinement loss of a few tens of dB m−1 suggest proposing three fibers with dispersion and nonlinear properties suitable for broadband supercontinuum generation at low peak power. The influence of peak power on the broadening of the supercontinuum spectrum is also investigated. Fibers with a flat all-normal dispersion profile provide a smooth spectrum with bandwidths of 1.215 and 1.626 µm at 30 dB with a peak power of 250 W. A fiber with an anomalous dispersion regime generates a supercontinuous spectrum, broadening to 3.868 µm in the mid-infrared region (2.467 µm bandwidth at 30 dB) under laser pulse excitation with 130 W peak power. Our results provide further insights into the generation of broadband mid-infrared supercontinuum using liquid-core silica-fibers, which have great potential for applications in the fields of optical communications and optical sensing.