Mid-infrared soliton self-frequency shift in chalcogenide glass

Abstract

Emerging applications in the mid-infrared (MIR) stimulate the growth and development of novel optical light sources. Soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) in soft glass fiber currently shows great potential as an efficient approach toward the generation of broadly tunable femtosecond pulses in the MIR. In this work, we demonstrate a highly efficient tunable soliton source based on SSFS in chalcogenide glass. We show a simple and fully fiberized system to generate these continuously tunable Raman solitons over a broad spectral range of 2.047–2.667 µm, which consumes no more than 87 pJ per pulse. The spectral measurements suggest that the generated pulses are as short as 62 fs with a maximum power conversion efficiency of 43%. This result is realized thanks to an 8 cm long A s 2 S 3 microstructure optical fiber tapered into a microwire. Thanks to their broad transparency, their high nonlinearity, and their adjustable chromatic dispersion, chalcogenide microwires are promising components for the development of compact and highly efficient MIR optical sources with low power consumption.

Roadmap on chalcogenide photonics

“…One such component, the chalcogenide optical fiber taper is most useful for tasks of nonlinear amplification and processing, with a nonlinearity enhanced by ∼10 4 times (thus γ ∼ = 200 (W.m) −1 ) with respect to the single-mode chalcogenide fiber, and with a chromatic dispersion that is broadly engineerable from normal, to zero, to anomalous [80]. Chalcogenide tapers provide a solution for supercontinuum generation [78], wavelength conversion [81,82], and optical parametric oscillation [83] with low power consumption.…”

Numerical Demonstration of the Soliton Self-Frequency Shift Process Beyond 8 μm in a Tellurite-Chalcogenide Fiber Cascaded Structure

“…However, chalcogenide fibers with such characteristics and a SSFS regime usually demand a seed pulse source >4 μm, which has not been achieved yet. At present, the experimental demonstration of the SSFS process in chalcogenide fibers is below 2.7 μm [18]. Despite soft glass fibers can offer impressive SSFS performance in MIR, the conversion efficiency is not satisfactory, due to the generation of noise solitons and dispersive waves under high input power.…”

“…As an important nonlinear wavelength conversion mechanism in optical fibers, the soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) effect [5] has been one of the most promising ways to build fiber-based widely tunable Raman soliton lasers. Most recently, the SSFS process in various Raman shifter fibers such as thulium-doped [6], [7], germanium-doped [8]- [10], fluoride [11], [12], tellurite [13]- [15], and chalcogenide [16]- [18] fibers has been studied and utilized to build tunable laser sources. Limited by the position of the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of optical fibers, the pumping wavelength of these Raman shifter fibers in MIR is usually ~2 μm or ~2.8 μm, which has been achieved by mode-locked thulium-doped fiber lasers [19], [20] and holmium- [21] or erbium-doped fiber lasers [22], respectively.…”

Soliton Order Preservation for Self-Frequency Shift With High Efficiency and Broad Tunability

“…As power is increased, the mother soliton of increasing order N transfers energy to an increasing number N of fundamental solitons, reducing the fraction of energy provided to the soliton that spectrally shifts the most. Hence, as the pump power increases, SSFS increases but energy conversion efficiency (ECE) decreases, resulting in a trade-off in between SSFS tunability and ECE [5]- [9].…”