Experimental study on supercontinuum generation in zero-dispersion wavelength decreasing photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

We have carried out experimentally the supercontinuum generation in GeO2-doped-core uniform photonic crystal fiber and zero-dispersion wavelength-decreasing photonic crystal fiber with pump pulses 1.8 ps operating at 1040 nm. Dispersion and nonlinear effects such as cross-phase modulation, four-wave mixing, modulation instability play a crucial role as they extend the supercontinuum towards short wavelength side. Zero-dispersion wavelength-decreasing photonic crystal fiber can improve group-velocity matching between solitons and dispersive waves deduced from numerical simulation of the evolution of spectra generated in a taper and uniform fiber. We obtained experimentally a spectrum expanding to the blue side and the power variation is indeed of 10 dB over a spectral range of 165.7 nm (between 4061 and 6718 nm) in the taper fiber.