Magneto-optical glasses are of considerable current interest, primarily for applications in fiber circuitry, optical isolation, all-optical diodes, optical switching and modulation. While the benchmark materials are still crystalline, glasses offer a variety of unique advantages, such as very high rare-earth and heavy-metal solubility and, in principle, the possibility of being produced in fiber form. In comparison to conventional fiber-drawing processes, pressure-assisted melt-filling of microcapillaries or photonic crystal fibers with magneto-optical glasses offers an alternative route to creating complex waveguide architectures from unusual combinations of glasses. For instance, strongly diamagnetic tellurite or chalcogenide glasses with high refractive index can be combined with silica in an all-solid, microstructured waveguide. This promises the implementation of as-yet-unsuitable but strongly active glass candidates as fiber waveguides, for example in photonic crystal fibers.
We report all-solid bandgap-guiding fibers formed by pumping molten tellurite glass into silica-air photonic crystal fiber at high pressure. The spectral positions of the guidance bands agree well with multipole simulations and bandgap calculations. The micrometer-diameter tellurite strands are found to contain microheterogeneities (most probably originating from devitrification), which increase the fiber attenuation, although no evidence of crystallization is seen in the bulk tellurite glass. The technique offers a potential route to employing difficult-to-handle glasses, or glasses unsuitable for fiber drawing, in fiber-based amplifiers, modulators, filters, and nonlinear devices.
Abstract:We explore the use of a highly nonlinear chalcogenide-silica waveguide for supercontinuum generation in the near infrared. The structure was fabricated by a pressure-assisted melt-filling of a silica capillary fiber (1.6 µm bore diameter) with Ga 4 Ge 21 Sb 10 S 65 glass. It was designed to have zero group velocity dispersion (for HE 11 core mode) at 1550 nm. Pumping a 1 cm length with 60 fs pulses from an erbium-doped fiber laser results in the generation of octave-spanning supercontinuum light for pulse energies of only 60 pJ. Good agreement is obtained between the experimental results and theoretical predictions based on numerical solutions of the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The pressure-assisted melt-filling approach makes it possible to realize highly nonlinear devices with unusual combinations of materials. For example, we show numerically that a 1 cm long As 2 S 3 :silica step-index fiber with a core diameter of 1 µm, pumped by 60 fs pulses at 1550 nm, would generate a broadband supercontinuum out to 4 µm. 25-27 (2000). 5. M. Foster and A. Gaeta, "Ultra-low threshold supercontinuum generation in sub-wavelength waveguides," Opt. ©2011 Optical Society of America
Efficient generation of a broad-band mid-infrared supercontinuum spectrum is reported in an arsenic trisulphide waveguide embedded in silica. A chalcogenide "nano-spike", designed to transform the incident light adiabatically into the fundamental mode of a 2-mm-long uniform section 1 µm in diameter, is used to achieve high launch efficiencies. The nano-spike is fully encapsulated in a fused silica cladding, protecting it from the environment. Nano-spikes provide a convenient means of launching light into sub-wavelength scale waveguides. Ultrashort (65 fs, repetition rate 100 MHz) pulses at wavelength 2 µm, delivered from a Tm-doped fiber laser, are launched with an efficiency ~12% into the subwavelength chalcogenide waveguide. Soliton fission and dispersive wave generation along the uniform section result in spectral broadening out to almost 4 µm for launched energies of only 18 pJ. The spectrum generated will have immediate uses in metrology and infrared spectroscopy. in 525-1800nm range with picosecond Yb pumping," Opt. Express 13(2), 377-381 (2005). 14. J. K. Ranka, R. S. Windeler, and A. J. Stentz, "Visible continuum generation in air-silica microstructure optical fibers with anomalous dispersion at 800 nm," Opt. Lett.
We report a hybrid chalcogenide-silica photonic crystal fiber made by pressure-assisted melt-filling of molten glass. Photonic bandgap guidance is obtained at a silica core placed centrally in a hexagonal array of continuous centimeters-long chalcogenide strands with diameters of 1.45 μm. In the passbands of the cladding, when the transmission through the silica core is very weak, the chalcogenide strands light up with distinct modal patterns corresponding to Mie resonances. In the spectral regions between these passbands, strong bandgap guidance is observed, where the silica core transmission loss is 60 dB/cm lower. The pressure-assisted fabrication approach opens up new ways of integrating sophisticated glass-based devices into optical fiber circuitry with potential applications in supercontinuum generation, magneto-optics, wavelength selective devices, and rare-earth-doped amplifiers with high gain per unit length.
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.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.