Numerical demonstration of widely tunable femtosecond soliton generation in chalcogenide microstructured fibers

Abstract

We numerically investigated widely tunable femtosecond solitons spanning from 4.1 to 7.2 µm in designed chalcogenide fibers with two rings of air holes. The core was made of Ge15Sb15Se70 glass and the cladding glass was composed of Ge20As15S65. By using a 4.1 µm fiber laser with a pulse width of 100 fs as the pump light and 1 m long chalcogenide microstructured fibers as the nonlinear media, widely tunable femtosecond solitons spanning from 4.1 to 7.2 µm were observed, and the pulse width of these tunable Raman solitons remained below 150 fs. The efficiencies of the mid-infrared soliton could be up to over 80%, ranging from 4.1–6.8 µm. Through numerical simulations, we also observed red-shifted dispersive waves varying from 10.2 to 8.9 µm. Our simulated results show that the designed chalcogenide microstructured fibers are promising nonlinear media for generating tunable mid-infrared light sources.