Coherence of supercontinua generated by ultrashort pulses compressed in optical fibers.
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.
Nicholson
J W
JW
OFS Laboratories, 19 Schoolhouse Road, Somerset, NJ 08873, USA. jwn@ofsoptics.com
Yablon
A D
AD
Yan
M F
MF
Wisk
P
P
Bise
R
R
Trevor
D J
DJ
Alonzo
J
J
Stockert
T
T
Fleming
J
J
Monberg
E
E
Dimarcello
F
F
Fini
J
J