Microstructured fibers with high lanthanum oxide glass core for nonlinear applications

We demonstrate a low loss microstructured fiber (MOF) with a high nonlinear glass core and silica holey cladding. The substitution of mostly used silica as core material of microstructured fibers by lanthanum oxide glass promises a high nonlinear conversion efficiency for supercontinuum (SC) generation. The glass composition is optimized in terms of thermochemical and optical requirements. The glass for the MOF core has a high lanthanum oxide concentration (10 mol% La2O3) and a good compatibility with the silica cladding. This is performed by adding a suitable alumina concentration up to 20 mol%. The lanthanum oxide glass preform rods were manufactured by melting technique. Besides purity issues the material homogeneity plays an important role to achieve low optical loss. The addition of fluorides allows the better homogenization of the glass composition in the preform volume by refining. The minimum attenuation of an unstructured fiber drawn from this glass is about 0.6 dB/m. It is mostly caused by decreasing of scattering effects. The microstructured silica cladding allows the considerable shifting of dispersive behavior of the MOF for an optimal pump light conversion. The MOF shows zero dispersion wavelengths (ZDW) of 1140 nm (LP01 mode) and 970 nm (LP11 mode). The supercontinuum generation was investigated with a 1064 nm pump laser (650 ps). It shows a broad band emission between 500 nm and 2200 nm.