Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in tapered chalcogenide fiber for producing octave-spanning frequency comb around 3 m m

We demonstrate mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum generation (SCG) with instantaneous bandwidth from 2.2 to 5 m m at 40 dB below the peak, covering the wavelength range desirable for molecular spectroscopy and numerous other applications. The SCG occurs in a tapered As 2 S 3 fiber prepared by in-situ tapering and is pumped by femtosecond pulses from the subharmonic of a mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser. Interference with a narrow linewidth c.w. laser verifies that the coherence properties of the near-IR frequency comb have been preserved through these cascaded nonlinear processes. With this approach stable broad mid-IR frequency combs can be derived from commercially available near-IR frequency combs without an extra stabilization mechanism.

[1]  Ole Bang,et al.  Supercontinuum: broad as a lamp, bright as a laser, now in the mid-infrared , 2012, Other Conferences.

[2]  Ingmar Hartl,et al.  Octave-spanning ultrafast OPO with 2.6-6.1 µm instantaneous bandwidth pumped by femtosecond Tm-fiber laser. , 2012, Optics express.

[3]  Vladimir Pervak,et al.  Coherence properties of a broadband femtosecond mid-IR optical parametric oscillator operating at degeneracy. , 2012, Optics express.

[4]  R. Ahmad,et al.  High efficiency and ultra broadband optical parametric four-wave mixing in chalcogenide-PMMA hybrid microwires. , 2012, Optics express.

[5]  Takenobu Suzuki,et al.  Five-order SRSs and supercontinuum generation from a tapered tellurite microstructured fiber with longitudinally varying dispersion. , 2011, Optics express.

[6]  Stuart D. Jackson,et al.  Octave spanning supercontinuum in an As2S3 taper using ultra-low pump pulse energy , 2011, CLEO: 2011 - Laser Science to Photonic Applications.

[7]  Konstantin L. Vodopyanov,et al.  Broadband degenerate OPO for mid-infrared frequency comb generation. , 2011, Optics express.

[8]  Ishwar D. Aggarwal,et al.  All-fiber mid-IR supercontinuum source from 1.5 to 5 µm , 2011, LASE.

[9]  M. Murnane,et al.  The attosecond nonlinear optics of bright coherent X-ray generation , 2010 .

[10]  Jasbinder S. Sanghera,et al.  Maximizing the bandwidth of supercontinuum generation in As2Se3 chalcogenide fibers. , 2010, Optics express.

[11]  L. Brilland,et al.  Strong infrared spectral broadening in low-loss As-S chalcogenide suspended core microstructured optical fibers. , 2010, Optics express.

[12]  Thomas Udem,et al.  Cavity-enhanced dual-comb spectroscopy , 2009, 0908.1928.

[13]  E. M. Dianov,et al.  High-purity chalcogenide glasses for fiber optics , 2009 .

[14]  B J Eggleton,et al.  Characterization of picosecond pulse nonlinear propagation in chalcogenide As(2)S(3) fiber. , 2009, Applied optics.

[15]  Rasmus Ischebeck,et al.  Phase stable net acceleration of electrons from a two-stage optical accelerator , 2008 .

[16]  M Cronin-Golomb,et al.  Over 4000 nm bandwidth of mid-IR supercontinuum generation in sub-centimeter segments of highly nonlinear tellurite PCFs. , 2008, Optics express.

[17]  Jun Ye,et al.  Cavity-enhanced optical frequency comb spectroscopy: application to human breath analysis. , 2008, Optics express.

[18]  Fritz Keilmann,et al.  Time-domain mid-infrared frequency-comb spectrometer. , 2004, Optics letters.

[19]  R. Windeler,et al.  Fundamental noise limitations on supercontinuum generation in microstructure fiber , 2002, 2003 European Quantum Electronics Conference. EQEC 2003 (IEEE Cat No.03TH8665).

[20]  John M Dudley,et al.  Coherence properties of supercontinuum spectra generated in photonic crystal and tapered optical fibers. , 2002, Optics letters.

[21]  F. Wise,et al.  Highly nonlinear As-S-Se glasses for all-optical switching. , 2002, Optics letters.

[22]  T. Hänsch,et al.  Phase-locked white-light continuum pulses: toward a universal optical frequency-comb synthesizer. , 2000, Optics letters.

[23]  T. Birks,et al.  Shape of fiber tapers , 1992 .

[24]  Robert R. Alfano,et al.  Emission in the Region 4000 to 7000 Å Via Four-Photon Coupling in Glass , 1970 .

[25]  Irving H. Malitson,et al.  Refractive Index of Arsenic Trisulfide , 1958 .