Mid-IR supercontinuum generation in a single-mode ZBLAN fiber pumped by a carbon-nanotube-based passively mode-locked erbium-doped femtosecond fiber laser

Sivasankara Rao Yemineni; Wenn Jing Lai; Alphones Arokiaswami; Ping Shum

doi:10.1117/12.2285315

15 February 2018 Mid-IR supercontinuum generation in a single-mode ZBLAN fiber pumped by a carbon-nanotube-based passively mode-locked erbium-doped femtosecond fiber laser

Sivasankara Rao Yemineni, Wenn Jing Lai, Alphones Arokiaswami, Ping Shum

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 10516, Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials and Devices XVII; 105160N (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2285315
Event: SPIE LASE, 2018, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The heavy fluoride fiber, ZBLAN (ZrF₄-BaF₂-LaF₃-AlF₃-NaF) is the commonly used fiber to generate supercontinuum (SC) in mid-IR region due to its transparency, high glass stability and technology maturity. Multi-stage mid-IR SC generation that involves multi-stage SC generation and multi-stage amplification is adopted widely. The system is generally complex, and suffers poor stability. Here, we reduced the complexity and improved stability and compactness of the system by using single-stage SC generation approach. For the first time to our knowledge, we demonstrate a carbon-nanotube (CNT) femtosecond passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser based SC generation in ZBLAN fiber. The CNT based mode-locking has achieved a pulse width of 620 fs with a repetition rate of 18 MHz at a centre wavelength of 1565 nm. A single stage amplification is employed on the mode-locked pulses and the trend of spectral broadening inside the ZBLAN fiber is studied experimentally at different input power levels. The study of the SC generation inside the ZBLAN fiber at high input powers is limited by the OSA range. We successfully demonstrated an SC generation inside ZBLAN fiber covering a bandwidth of over 2300 nm extending from 900 nm to beyond 3200 nm at an input power of 200 mW. We achieved a smooth spectrum with spectral flatness of less than 8 dB. The relationship between the generated SC bandwidth and input power to the ZBLAN fiber is observed to be almost linear in log scale, with ~110 nm bandwidth increments per unit dBm.

Citation Download Citation

Sivasankara Rao Yemineni, Wenn Jing Lai, Alphones Arokiaswami, and Ping Shum "Mid-IR supercontinuum generation in a single-mode ZBLAN fiber pumped by a carbon-nanotube-based passively mode-locked erbium-doped femtosecond fiber laser ", Proc. SPIE 10516, Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials and Devices XVII, 105160N (15 February 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2285315

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available