Spectrally flat mid-infrared supercontinuum pumped by a high power 2 µm noise-like pulse.

Abstract

We demonstrate spectrally flat high-power mid-infrared supercontinuum (MIR SC) generation with record-breaking power of 33.1 W and power conversion efficiency of 75.06%. It is pumped by a 2 µm master oscillator power amplifier system consisting of a figure-8 mode-locked noise-like pulse seed laser and dual-stage Tm-doped fiber amplifiers with repetition rate of 4.08 MHz. Through cascading a piece of ZBLAN fiber with 13.5 µm large core diameter by direct-low-loss fusion splicing, SCs with spectral ranges of 1.9-3.68 µm, 1.9-3.84 µm, 1.9-4.02 µm and average powers of 33.1 W, 29.8 W, 25.9 W are generated. To the best of our knowledge, all of them have achieved the highest output power under the same condition of MIR spectrum range. This high-power all-fiber MIR SC laser system has relatively simple architecture, high efficiency and flat spectrum, demonstrating the advantages of 2 µm noise-like pulse pump in high-power MIR SC generation.