Nanomechanical resonators based on strained silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) have received a large amount of attention in fields such as sensing and quantum optomechanics due to their exceptionally high quality factors (Qs). Room-temperature Qs approaching 1 billion are now in reach by means of phononic crystals (soft-clamping) and strain engineering. Despite great progress in enhancing Qs, difficulties in fabrication of soft-clamped samples limits their implementation into actual devices. An alternative means of achieving ultra-high Qs was shown using trampoline resonators with engineered clamps, which serves to localize the stress to the center of the resonator, while minimizing stress at the clamping. The effectiveness of this approach has since come into question from recent studies employing string resonators with clamptapering. Here, we investigate this idea using nanomechanical string resonators with engineered clampings similar to those presented for trampolines. Importantly, the effect of orienting the strings diagonally or perpendicularly with respect to the silicon frame is investigated. It is found that increasing the clamp width for diagonal strings slightly increases the Qs of the fundamental out-of-plane mode at small radii, while perpendicular strings only deteriorate with increasing clamp width. Measured Qs agree well with finite element method simulations even for higher-order resonances. The small increase cannot account for previously reported Qs of trampoline resonators. Instead, we propose the effect to be intrinsic and related to surface and radiation losses.

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Spectral broadening of optical frequency combs with high repetition rate is of significant interest in optical communications, radio-frequency photonics and spectroscopy. Silicon nitride waveguides (Si3N4) in the anomalous dispersion region have shown efficient supercontinuum generation spanning an octave-bandwidth. However, the broadening mechanism in this regime is usually attained with femtosecond pulses in order to maintain the coherence. Supercontinuum generation in the normal dispersion regime is more prone to longer (ps) pulses, but the implementation in normal dispersion silicon nitride waveguides is challenging as it possesses strong requirements in propagation length and losses. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the use of a Si3N4 waveguide to perform coherent spectral broadening using pulses in the picosecond regime with high repetition rate. Moreover, our work explores the formation of optical wave breaking using a higher energy pulse which enables the generation of a coherent octave spanning spectrum. These results offer a new prospect for coherent broadening using long duration pulses and replacing bulky optical components.

Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link back to DTU Orbit Citation (APA): Christensen, S. L., Johansen, M. M., Michieletto, M., Triches, M., Hout, L., Maack, M. D., & Laegsgaard, J. (2020). Novel high-speed camera analysis of transverse mode instabilities in rod fiber amplifiers. "Novel high-speed camera analysis of transverse mode instabilities in rod fiber amplifiers," Proc. ABSTRACTIn this work a novel accurate method of measuring beam fluctuations is presented and applied to analyze transverse mode instabilities (TMI). The new measurement, ST-measurement, uses Fourier analysis on data from a high-speed camera to achieve raw spatial information about beam fluctuations. TMI in a 65 µm modefield-diameter aeroGain-ROD-PM85 fiber is investigated using both the ST-and standard photo detector measurement. A comparison of the two measurements shows the quantitative and qualitative superiority of the new ST-measurement due to the spatial information. Numerical simulations are carried out to support the interpretation of the data.

Single-pass amplification using rod-type fibers has become a common route to pulsed laser sources around 1030 nm with high average and peak power. Average-power scaling is currently limited by the dynamic thermooptic phenomenon of "transverse mode instability." In comparison, double-pass amplifier configurations have not been extensively studied. Recent theoretical and experimental work has shown both static and dynamic mode degradation phenomena, including an unexpected nonlinear polarization rotation effect. Here we present new results obtained with a modified setup using polarization filtering between the first and the second pass. We obtain up to 113 W output power, i.e., more than 40 dB of amplification from a single amplifier module seeded by 10 mW of 20 ps/20 MHz/1030 nm pulses. We observe excellent beam quality and polarization extinction ratio. Finally, we investigate a wide range of seed powers and report a strong increase in the static mode deformation threshold with decreasing seed power. The experimental results are corroborated by numerical simulations.

In this paper we numerically study supercontinuum generation by pumping a silicon nitride waveguide, with two zero-dispersion wavelengths, with femtosecond pulses. The waveguide dispersion is designed so that the pump pulse is in the normal-dispersion regime. We show that because of self-phase modulation, the initial pulse broadens into the anomalous-dispersion regime, which is sandwiched between the two normal-dispersion regimes, and here a soliton is formed. The interaction of the soliton and the broadened pulse in the normal-dispersion regime causes additional spectral broadening through formation of dispersive waves by non-degenerate four-wave mixing and cross-phase modulation. This broadening occurs mainly towards the second normal-dispersion regime. We show that pumping in either normaldispersion regime allows broadening towards the other normal-dispersion regime. This ability to steer the continuum extension towards the direction of the other normal-dispersion regime, beyond the sandwiched anomalous-dispersion regime underlies the directional supercontinuum notation. We numerically confirm the approach in a standard silica microstructured fiber geometry with two zero-dispersion wavelengths.

We report a novel, to the best of our knowledge, analysis of high power rod fiber amplifiers by monitoring the cross-polarization of the output. Spatially and temporally resolved imaging of co- and cross-polarizations at high power amplification reveals dynamic eigenmode behavior of the rod fiber. The dynamic of the eigenmodes is caused by the moving refractive index grating written by the modal interference pattern of transverse mode instability and is the first direct observation of this refractive index grating, to our knowledge.

In this work we investigate transverse mode instability (TMI) in the presence of pump intensity noise and a controlled perturbation of the input coupling for a rod-type fiber amplifier using spatially and temporally resolved imaging (ST). We show that inherent pump intensity noise from the power supply can define significant peaks in the resulting TMI spectrum. ST measurements in the transition region of TMI also indicates that the simple picture of TMI being seeded by the combination of a static initial fraction of LP11 and pump or signal intensity noise is not valid for our measurements. Furthermore, we present seeding of TMI by perturbing the input coupling dynamically which allows measurements of the TMI gain as a function of frequency and signal power.