High-power broadband supercontinuum generation through a simple narrow-bandwidth FBGs-based fiber laser cavity

Abstract

The generation of supercontinuum (SC) often requires ultrashort pulsed lasers with high peak power and gain media with large nonlinear coefficients, such as a long piece of fiber or photonic crystal fiber. In this Letter, we propose and demonstrate that high-power SC can be generated through a simple narrow-bandwidth fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs)-based laser cavity without any modulation, based on the mechanism of intense nonlinear effects induced by the inherent self-pulsation generated inside the cavity. In the experiment, an ∼80 W SC laser with the spectrum range from <600 nm to 1600 nm was achieved. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report about SC generation through a simple fiber laser cavity. This work enriches the research content of SC and provides a cost-effective method for high-power SC lasers.