NIR to MIR ultra-broadband supercontinuum laser source based on all-silica fibers.

Abstract

We demonstrated an ultra-broadband supercontinuum (SC) laser source with a wavelength range spanning the near-infrared (NIR) to mid-infrared (MIR) region. The SC spectrum was generated in a very short piece of highly nonlinear silica fiber (HNLF) which has a zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of 1.55 µm. The pump source used has a spectral coverage of 1.5∼2.4 µm which covers the ZDW of HNLF, resulting in a dramatic blue and red shift of the spectrum through strong non-linear effects. As the pump laser pulse launched into HNLF, a SC spectrum with broadband range of 0.92∼2.92 µm and maximum average power of 5.09 W was achieved, which sets record coverage of HNLF-based watts magnitude SC laser sources for now, to the best of the authors' knowledge. The setup consists of silica fiber that can be considered easy-to-implement and with a cost-effectiveness scheme for ultra-broadband SC generation that could be easily applied to optical fiber sensing and spectral imaging technology.