Nanosecond supercontinuum generation at the mJ level

Scott C. Buchter; Bo Andersen; Martin D. Nielsen; Kim P. Hansen; Harald Simonsen

doi:10.1117/12.582591

23 December 2004 Nanosecond supercontinuum generation at the mJ level

Scott C. Buchter, Bo Andersen, Martin D. Nielsen, Kim P. Hansen, Harald Simonsen

Proceedings Volume 5620, Solid State Laser Technologies and Femtosecond Phenomena; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.582591
Event: European Symposium on Optics and Photonics for Defence and Security, 2004, London, United Kingdom

Abstract

Light sources with a broad spectral output and diffraction limited beam quality have a wide variety of present and future applications. A few of particular interest are hyperspectral laser radar for environmental monitoring, active hyperspectral imaging for detection and identification of objects, and speckle-free illumination. With the exception of systems based on amplified femto- or picosecond lasers, which are large and extremely complicated, pulse energies from supercontinuum laser sources have been limited to <10 microJoules which is generally not sufficient for the applications listed above. We present a simple technique to generate broadband light spanning several hundred nanometers in the near infrared with pulse energies of ~1 mJ, an improvement of approximately two orders of magnitude. The system is comprised of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser and a very large mode area photonic crystal fiber. A combination of cascaded stimulated Raman scattering, four wave mixing, and self-phase modulation is responsible for the spectral broadening. Possibilities of scaling the output to the ~10 mJ level as well as extending the spectral coverage to the visible and mid-infrared will also be discussed.

Citation Download Citation

Scott C. Buchter, Bo Andersen, Martin D. Nielsen, Kim P. Hansen, and Harald Simonsen "Nanosecond supercontinuum generation at the mJ level", Proc. SPIE 5620, Solid State Laser Technologies and Femtosecond Phenomena, (23 December 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.582591

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