Ultra low-noise coherent supercontinuum amplification and compression below 100 fs in an all-fiber polarization-maintaining thulium fiber amplifier

Rampur, Anupamaa; Stepanenko, Yuriy; Stępniewski, Grzegorz; Kardaś, Tomasz M.; Dobrakowski, Dominik; Spangenberg, Dirk-Mathys; Feurer, Thomas; Heidt, Alexander M.; Klimczak, Mariusz

doi:10.1364/oe.27.035041

Cited by 36 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Since PM ANDi fibers and corresponding SC sources are now available 43,44 , this is a straightforward task. Indeed, our preliminary tests with a PM ANDi SC source and an all-PM chirped pulse amplification system indicate that the RIN after the amplifier is very close to the RIN of the Er-fiber seed system 45 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Low noise all-fiber amplification of a coherent supercontinuum at 2 µm and its limits imposed by polarization noise

Heidt

Hodasi

Rampur

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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We report a low noise, broadband, ultrafast Thulium/Holmium co-doped all-fiber chirped pulse amplifier, seeded by an Erbium-fiber system spectrally broadened via coherent supercontinuum generation in an all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber. The amplifier supports a − 20 dB bandwidth of more than 300 nm and delivers high quality 66 fs pulses with more than 70 kW peak power directly from the output fiber. The total relative intensity noise (RIN) integrated from 10 Hz to 20 MHz is 0.07%, which to our knowledge is the lowest reported RIN for wideband ultrafast amplifiers operating at 2 µm to date. This is achieved by eliminating noise-sensitive anomalous dispersion nonlinear dynamics from the spectral broadening stage. In addition, we identify the origin of the remaining excess RIN as polarization modulational instability (PMI), and propose a route towards complete elimination of this excess noise. Hence, our work paves the way for a next generation of ultra-low noise frequency combs and ultrashort pulse sources in the 2 µm spectral region that rival or even outperform the excellent noise characteristics of Erbium-fiber technology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Low noise all-fiber amplification of a coherent supercontinuum at 2 µm and its limits imposed by polarization noise

Heidt

Hodasi

Rampur

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…in nonlinear bio-photonic imaging, ultrafast spectroscopy, coherent X-ray generation, attoscience, and low-noise ultrafast fiber laser development, with spectral coverage extending from UV to mid-IR wavelengths. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerical studies of the fundamental coherence limits have found that the low-noise, high coherence properties of octave-spanning ANDi SC are maintained even for very long pump pulses up to about 1 ps duration if these pump pulses are shot-noise limited [28]. While polarisation noise effects can drastically reduce the stability of ANDi SC, this can be completely avoided by employing only polarisation-maintaining fibers [17,[29][30][31]. These results suggest that ANDi SC should be perfectly suitable for ultrafast experiments, including nonlinear pulse compression to the single-cycle regime, for pump pulse durations up to about 1 ps.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Noise amplification in all-normal dispersion fiber supercontinuum generation and its impact on ultrafast photonics applications

Sierro¹,

Heidt²

2020

OSA Continuum

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Highly coherent and low-noise supercontinuum (SC) sources based on nonlinear spectral broadening of femtosecond pulses in all-normal dispersion (ANDi) fibers are attractive for many applications in ultrafast photonics. By simulating a real nonlinear pulse compression experiment, we numerically investigate the impact of shot noise and technical pump laser fluctuations on the quality and stability of single-cycle pulse generation and other multi-shot experiments based on the manipulation of the SC spectral phase. We find that for pump pulse durations of less than 600 fs, input relative intensity noise <1%, and correctly chosen fiber lengths, the initial fluctuations of the pump laser are at most amplified by a factor of three. We also show that the usual strong correlation between SC coherence and quality of the compressed pulses collapses in the presence of technical noise, and that in this situation the coherence is not a useful figure of merit to quantify pulse quality, noise amplification, or decoherence due to incoherent nonlinear dynamics. Our results highlight the very limited impact of technical pump laser noise on ANDi SC generation and are of practical relevance for many ultrafast photonics applications that require high-quality, low-noise SC sources.

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“…This technique has the limitation of not being able to characterize the SC noise in the longer wavelength region due to the lack of suitable highly dispersive low-loss fibers. Wavelength resolved SC noise has also been studied using filters and photodiodes to capture the individual pulse-to-pulse statistics either with an electrical spectrum analyser (ESA) (to get the noise in dB/Hz) 37,46,47 or with fast oscilloscopes [48][49][50][51] but to date the technique has been limited to investigations in the near-IR. Studies of the average properties of mid-IR SC sources have been carried out with slow photodiodes in terms of the fluctuations in the total power 26 and the polarization properties of the SNR 52 , but to date the RIN profile, i.e., the pulse-to-pulse spectrally resolved pulse energy variation as function of wavelength across the mid-IR SC spectrum, has remained an open question.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

In-amplifier and cascaded mid-infrared supercontinuum sources with low noise through gain-induced soliton spectral alignment

Kwarkye

Jensen

Engelsholm

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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The pulse-to-pulse relative intensity noise (RIN) of near-infrared (near-IR) in-amplifier supercontinuum (SC) sources and mid-IR cascaded SC sources was experimentally and numerically investigated and shown to have significantly lowered noise due to the fundamental effect of gain-induced soliton-spectral alignment. The mid-IR SC source is based on a near-IR in-amplifier SC pumping a cascade of thulium-doped and ZBLAN fibers. We demonstrate that the active thulium-doped fiber not only extend the spectrum, but also to significantly reduce the RIN by up to 22% in the long wavelength region above 2 μm. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the noise reduction is the result of an interplay between absorption-emission processes and nonlinear soliton dynamics leading to the soliton-spectral alignment. In the same way we show that the RIN of the near-IR in-amplifier SC source is already significantly reduced because the spectral broadening takes place in an active fiber that also introduces soliton-spectral alignment. We further show that the low noise properties are transferred to the subsequent fluoride SC, which has a RIN lower than 10% (5%) in a broad region from 1.1–3.6 μm (1.4–3.0 μm). The demonstrated low noise significantly improves the applicability of these broadband sources for mid-IR imaging and spectroscopy.

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Ultra low-noise coherent supercontinuum amplification and compression below 100 fs in an all-fiber polarization-maintaining thulium fiber amplifier

Cited by 36 publications

References 29 publications

Low noise all-fiber amplification of a coherent supercontinuum at 2 µm and its limits imposed by polarization noise

Low noise all-fiber amplification of a coherent supercontinuum at 2 µm and its limits imposed by polarization noise

Noise amplification in all-normal dispersion fiber supercontinuum generation and its impact on ultrafast photonics applications

In-amplifier and cascaded mid-infrared supercontinuum sources with low noise through gain-induced soliton spectral alignment

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