title: Continuous-wave supercontinuum laser based on an erbium-doped fiber ring cavity incorporating a highly nonlinear optical fiber.
abstract: We experimentally demonstrate a novel erbium-doped fiber based continuous-wave (cw) supercontinuum laser. The laser has a simple ring-cavity structure incorporating an erbium-doped fiber and a highly nonlinear dispersion-shifted fiber (HNL-DSF). Differently from previously demonstrated cw supercontinuum sources based on single propagation of a strong Raman pump laser beam through a highly nonlinear fiber, erbium gain inside the cavity generates a seed light oscillation, and the oscillated light subsequently evolves into a supercontinuum by nonlinear effects such as modulation instability and stimulated Raman scattering in the HNL-DSF. High quality of the depolarized supercontinuum laser output with a spectral bandwidth larger than 250 nm is readily achieved.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-Ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan. j.h.lee@ieee.org
authors.forename: Ju Han
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Yuichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takushima
authors.forename: Kazuro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kikuchi