Abstract
We present a high-speed wavelength tunable photonic crystal fiber-based source capable of generating tunable femtosecond solitons in the infrared region. Through measurements and numerical simulation, we show that both the pulsewidth and the spectral width of the output pulses remain nearly constant over the entire tuning range from 860 to 1160 nm. This remarkable behavior is observed even when pump pulses are heavily chirped (7400 fs^2), which allows to avoid bulky compensation optics, or the use of another fiber, for dispersion compensation usually required by the tuning device. Received: 7 July 2011, Accepted: 1 February 2012; Edited by: A. Goñi; Reviewed by: J. Chavez Boggio, Leibniz Institut f\ur Astrophysik Potsdam, Germany; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4279/PIP.040001Cite as: M. Caldarola, V. A. Bettachini, A. A. Rieznik, P. G. Konig, M. E. Masip, D. F. Grosz, A. V. Bragas, Papers in Physics 4, 040001 (2012)
Highlights
Light sources based on the propagation of solitons in optical fibers have emerged as a compact solution to the need of a benchtop source of ultra-short tunable pulses [1,2,3]
The soliton formation from femtosecond pulses launched into an optical fiber is explained in terms of the interplay between selfphase modulation (SPM) and group-velocity dispersion (GVD) in the anomalous dispersion regime [4]
The wavelength tunability is a consequence of the Raman-induced frequency shift (RIFS) produced on the pulse when traveling through the fiber
Summary
Light sources based on the propagation of solitons in optical fibers have emerged as a compact solution to the need of a benchtop source of ultra-short tunable pulses [1,2,3]. The term soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) [6] was coined to name this effect widely used to produce tunable femtosecond pulses in different wavelength ranges, e.g., from 850 to 1050 nm [7], from 1050 to 1690 nm [8], and from 1566 to 1775 nm [1]. The wavelength tunability in a PCF-based light source is provided by the modulation of the pump power injected into the fiber [11,12,13,14]. The need to pre-compress the pump pulse to avoid the chirp produced by the AOM contrives against the compact and mechanically robust design of the light source. We demonstrate that the PCF-based source presented here is robust against chirped pump pulses.
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