This study proposes a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) made of fused silica glass with the core infiltrated with 1,2-dibromoethane (
C
2
H
4
B
r
2
) as a new source of supercontinuum light pulses. Due to the modifications of the PCF’s structure geometry, a number of computer simulations investigating their optimized structures has been carried out. This aimed at achieving flat near-zero dispersion and zero dispersion wavelength matching of the pump wavelength for efficient spectral broadening. Based on the obtained results, the structural geometries of two
C
2
H
4
B
r
2
-core PCFs were optimized using numerical modeling for broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation. The first fiber structure with a lattice constant 1.5 µm and filling factor 0.4 has all-normal dispersion profile. The SC with a broadened spectral bandwidth from 0.64 to 1.70 µm is generated by pump pulses centered at a wavelength of 1.03 µm, 120 fs duration, and energy of 1.5 nJ. The second proposed structure—with lattice constant 1.5 µm and filling factor 0.65—has anomalous dispersion for wavelengths longer than 1.03 µm. We obtained high coherence of the SC pulses in the anomalous dispersion range over wavelengths of 0.7–2.4 µm with the same pump pulse as the first fiber and with input energy of 0.09 nJ. These fibers would be interesting candidates for all-fiber SC sources operating with low-energy pump lasers as cost-effective alternatives to glass core fibers.
All-normal dispersion supercontinuum (ANDi SC) generation in a lead-bismuth-gallate glass solid-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with cladding air-holes infiltrated with carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is experimentally investigated and numerically verified. The liquid infiltration results in additional degrees of freedom that are complimentary to conventional dispersion engineering techniques and that allow the design of soft-glass ANDi fibers with an exceptionally flat near-zero dispersion profile. The unique combination of high nonlinearity and low normal dispersion enables the generation of a coherent, low-noise SC covering 0.93–2.5 µm requiring only 12.5 kW of pump peak power delivered by a standard ultrafast erbium-fiber laser with 100 MHz pulse repetition rate (PRR). This is a much lower peak power level than has been previously required for the generation of ANDi SC with bandwidths exceeding one octave in silica- or soft-glass fibers. Our results show that liquid-composite fibers are a promising pathway for scaling the PRR of ANDi SC sources by making the concept accessible to pump lasers with hundreds of megahertz of gigahertz PRR that have limited peak power per pulse but are often required in applications such as high-speed nonlinear imaging, optical communications, or frequency metrology. Furthermore, due to the overlap of the SC with the major gain bands of many rare-earth fiber amplifiers, our source could serve as a coherent seed for low-noise ultrafast lasers operating in the short-wave infrared spectral region.
We report a numerical study on mid-infrared (IR) supercontinuum (SC) generation in the regime of all normal dispersion using lead bismuth gallate glass photonic crystal fiber. This fiber allows the changing of dispersion from anomalous dispersion to ultra-flat normal dispersion in the wavelength range of over 930 nm by filling its cladding holes with C2Cl4. Using a 12.5 kW laser pulse at 2.8 µm as a pump source, we demonstrate that a broad and highly coherent SC generation spectrum is generated in the wavelength range of 1.2
μ
m
–3.4
μ
m
with the effects of vacuum noise. However, pulse-to-pulse relative intensity noise significantly decreases the coherence. These interesting optical properties make the proposed C2Cl4—infiltrated fiber highly promising for various applications in the mid-IR regime, particularly, spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and metrology.
In this paper, we propose three solid-core photonic crystal fibers based on silica, with hexagonal, circular and square lattices as a cladding, composed of 8 rings of air-holes surrounding the core, infiltrated with ethanol. Using a commercial software we simulated the light propagation in these structures. The size of the air-holes was from 1 µm to 4 µm. We have shown that the fibers with the hexagonal lattices are optimal for supercontinuum generation since their dispersion characteristics are flat and the smallest.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.