title: Coherence of supercontinua generated by ultrashort pulses compressed in optical fibers.
abstract: Femtosecond fiber lasers together with nonlinear fibers are compact, reliable, all-fiber supercontinuum sources. Maintaining an all-fiber configuration, however, necessitates pulse compression in an optical fiber, which can lead to nonlinearities for subhundred femtosecond, nanojoule pulses. In this work we show that using large-mode-area fibers for pulse compression mitigates the nonlinearity, resulting in compressed pulses with significantly reduced satellite pulses. Consequently, supercontinua generated with these pulses are shown to have as much as a 10 dB increase in coherence fringe contrast. By using a hybrid highly nonlinear fiber-photonic crystal fiber, the continuum can be extended to visible wavelengths while still maintaining high coherence.
authors.affiliation: OFS Laboratories, 19 Schoolhouse Road, Somerset, NJ 08873, USA. jwn@ofsoptics.com
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Nicholson
authors.forename: A D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Yablon
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wisk
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bise
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Trevor
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Alonzo
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stockert
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fleming
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Monberg
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Dimarcello
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fini