Abstract
We demonstrate environmentally protected delivery of high-power femtosecond mid-IR pulses in a single-mode ZBLAN fiber by soliton formation. A 70-fs Cr:ZnS laser at 2.4 µm reaches this regime already at ~2 nJ launched pulse energy, while a 110-fs pulse can be transmitted without visible shortening over meters of fiber. We also measured the nonlinear-optical coefficient of ZBLAN as n2 = 2.7 ± 0.2 × 10−16 cm2/W at 2.4 µm wavelength.
Highlights
Mid-infrared femtosecond oscillators already have numerous applications as broadband sources for sensing and molecular spectroscopy [1,2], as seed sources for amplifiers [3], and pumping sources for OPO [4]
For output of a midIR femtosecond oscillator to be of any use for real life applications, a way must be provided for environmentally-protected fiber beam delivery, which would not affect the spectral or temporal pulse profile
In this work we demonstrate the first fiber delivery of the high energy femtosecond midIR laser pulses (70 fs), produced by the recently developed in our group femtosecond mid-IR Cr:ZnS laser [11,12]
Summary
Mid-infrared femtosecond oscillators already have numerous applications as broadband sources for sensing and molecular spectroscopy [1,2], as seed sources for amplifiers [3], and pumping sources for OPO [4] Due to their remarkably broad spectra overlapping with water free as well as with water absorption bands of tissue they are very promising for such medical applications as differential Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), neurosurgery and ophthalmology [5]. They are attractive for two-photon nonlinear microscopy, fine material processing of plastics and semiconductors, as well as for free range terrestrial and space communications. For high-energy pulses, one of the ways of delivery is to realize the soliton propagation regime [6,7]
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