Experimental Study on the Role of Chromatic Dispersion in Continuous-Wave Supercontinuum Generation

Abstract

The influence of chromatic dispersion on CW-pumped supercontinuum generation in km-long standard fibers is experimentally investigated. We perform our study by means of a tunable, high-power fiber ring laser pumping a dispersion-shifted fiber in the wavelength range of small and medium anomalous dispersion. Our results show that, at low input powers, chromatic dispersion plays a dominant role on nonlinear pump spectral broadening, giving rise to a broader spectrum when pumping just above the zero-dispersion wavelength of the fiber. At higher input powers, however, the width of the generated supercontinuum spectrum is mostly due to the Raman effect, hence more independent of the value of the chromatic dispersion coefficient. We show that, in this case, the optimum pumping wavelengths for supercontinuum generation are not so close to the zero-dispersion wavelength of the fiber as in the previous case. In these conditions, as the chromatic dispersion grows we can obtain square-shaped and high-power density spectra, which seem extremely promising for applications in optical coherence tomography.

Visible continuum pulses based on enhanced dispersive wave generation for endogenous fluorescence imaging

“…When these two pulses propagate along the fiber, the trapped pulse in the normal dispersion region shifts to the shorter wavelength while the soliton pulse shifts to the longer wavelength. The soliton pulse is perturbed by the cross-phase modulation from the trapped signal pulse, which leads to the soliton pulse transferring part of its energy to the trapped pulse [31]. As the spectral components from SPM and FWM extend into the normal dispersion region, working as trapped signal pulse, sufficient spectral components are shared by the soliton and the DW.…”

Simulation investigation on supercontinuum generation and noise characteristics in the normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber with a flattened dispersion profile

“…The noise characteristics were considered as the dynamic responses of typical SC spectral structures to the seed pulse amplitude noise. Lots of experimental and theoretical efforts have been made in recent years, and the mechanisms of the SCG are further understood [6][7][8][9][10][11] . The SCG is affected by dispersion, SPM, FWM, stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), self-steepening (SS), and so on.…”