Abstract
Near-infrared supercontinuum generation by using silica-based highly-nonlinear fiber placed inside of the ring-cavity of an erbium-doped fiber laser pulsed by mode-locking is experimentally demonstrated. Only one erbium-doped fiber amplifier is employed to generate supercontinuum with a spectral width as long as 830nm (from 1205 to 2035nm) and a spectral power higher than -30 dBm/nm. To generate supercontinuum, it is not necessary a second amplifier to raise the power of the laser pulses coupled into the nonlinear fiber. Moreover, all the devices employed are commercial and available at any photonics laboratory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of this kind of device by pumping the nonlinear fiber in the third window of communications.
Highlights
Supercontinuum generation (SCG) can be achieved using continuous-wave lasers, the pumping by means of pulsed lasers is usually more efficient, since the energy is restricted in very short intervals of time and, the optical intensity is extremely raised
The optical intensity of our system can be boosted by using optical fiber because the light is practically confined in a very small area (
Photonic-crystal fibers (PCF) pumped at 800 nm (Ti:sapphire laser) are employed for SCG from ultraviolet up to near-infrared (NIR); highly-nonlinear silica fibers (HNLF) achieve SCG from NIR up to 2.2 μm; zirconium fluoride (ZrF4, ZBLAN) fibers, and indium fluoride (InF3) fibers can extend the spectrum until 4 μm and 5 μm, respectively; and chalcogenide (As2S3, As2Se3) optical fibers [3] extend from 2 μm up to 10 μm
Summary
SCG can be achieved using continuous-wave lasers, the pumping by means of pulsed lasers is usually more efficient, since the energy is restricted in very short intervals of time and, the optical intensity is extremely raised. The silica HNLFs are a very suitable choice to SCG since they can provide high spectral powers (>1 mW∕nm along several hundreds of nanometer) and can be pumped in a really effective way by means of mode-locked lasers based on commercial erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), which makes possible the development of simple, stable, compact, and reliable supercontinuum sources.
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