Optical solitons and supercontinuum generation in a tellurite microstructured optical fiber

Abstract

We demonstrate soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS), multiple optical solitons and supercontinuum (SC) generation in a tellurite microstructured optical fiber (TMOF). By using an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) with the pulse of ∼80MHz and ∼200fs as the pump source, the evolution of SSFS is investigated at the pump wavelengths of ∼1730, 1750, 1810 and 1900nm with the fiber length of ∼20cm. At the pump wavelength of ∼1730nm, SSFS with the soliton center wavelength from ∼1850 to 1995nm is observed. Increasing the pump wavelength to ∼1920nm and the fiber length to ∼100cm, stable multiple optical solitons and dispersive waves (DWs) are obtained. Changing the pump source to a SC source which is generated in a single mode fiber (SMF) pumped by a nanosecond laser with the wavelength of ∼1550nm, a broadband SC spectrum from ∼580 to 2796nm is obtained at the pump power of ∼202mW. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of SC generation in the TMOF by using SC light generated by a nanosecond laser.