Manipulation of supercontinuum generation by stimulated cascaded four-wave mixing in tapered fibers

Abstract

Tailoring supercontinuum generation is important for a number of applications. Stimulated four-wave mixing in tapered optical fibers can lead to modified initial conditions for the evolution of supercontinua. We experimentally show that synchronizing a pump pulse with an additional signal pulse induces cascaded four-wave mixing components. The spectral evolution and the interaction with the pump wavelength are investigated in detail upon increasing pump power. Furthermore it will be shown that four-wave mixing components provide the initiation for an altered shape of the spectral fiber output when soliton dynamics are involved. We finally demonstrate the altered evolution in a synchronized feedback configuration. This work can lead to a control over specific spectral components of supercontinua.