Soliton trapping of dispersive waves in photonic crystal fiber with two zero dispersive wavelengths

Abstract

Based on the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation, we present a numerical study of trapping of dispersive waves by solitons during supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers pumped with femtosecond pulses in the anomalous dispersion region. Numerical simulation results show that the generated supercontinuum is bounded by two branches of dispersive waves, namely blue-shifted dispersive waves (B-DWs) and red-shifted dispersive waves (R-DWs). We find a novel phenomenon that not only B-DWs but also R-DWs can be trapped by solitons across the zero-dispersion wavelength when the group-velocity matching between the soliton and the dispersive wave is satisfied, which may led to the generation of new spectral components via mixing of solitons and dispersive waves. Mixing of solitons with dispersive waves has been shown to play an important role in shaping not only the edge of the supercontinuum, but also its central part around the higher zero-dispersion wavelength. Further, we show that the phenomenon of soliton trapping of dispersive waves in photonic crystal fibers with two zero-dispersion wavelengths has a very close relationship with pumping power and the interval between two zero-dispersion wavelengths. In order to clearly display the evolution of soliton trapping of dispersive waves, the spectrogram of output pulses is observed using cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating technique (XFROG).