Intensity and polarization dependences of the supercontinuum generation in birefringent and highly nonlinear microstructured fibers

Antoine Proulx,Nicolas Hô,Réal Vallée,Jean-Michel Ménard,Claude Paré,Jacques M Laniel

doi:10.1364/oe.11.003338

Abstract

We present experimental results highlighting the physica mechanism responsible for the initial spectral broadening of femtosecond Ti:Sapphire pulses in a highly birefringent microstructured fiber having a small effective area. By rotating the input polarization and varying the injected power while monitoring the resulting changes in the output spectrum, we are bringing clear evidences that the initial broadening mechanism leading to a broadband supercontinuum is indeed the fission of higher-order solitons into redshifted fundamental solitons along with blueshifted nonsolitonic radiation.

Highlights

Over the past few years, microstructured (MS) optical fibers have generated a lot of interest because of their unique and often revolutionary physical properties
The input conditions were similar to those leading to the results shown in Fig. 4: we used a 2 m long section of the MS fiber shown in Fig. 1, the input laser had a pulse duration of 192 fs and a wavelength of 758 nm
We have presented experimental results on SCG in a highly birefringent and highly nonlinear MS fiber

Summary

Introduction

Over the past few years, microstructured (MS) optical fibers have generated a lot of interest because of their unique and often revolutionary physical properties. The supercontinua were generated by injecting 192 fs laser pulses (FWHM) at a wavelength of 758 nm and an intensity of 56 GW/cm2 (peak power/effective area) along the two eigenpolarization axes of the fiber.

Results

Conclusion