title: Optical frequency up-conversion by supercontinuum-free widely-tunable fiber-optic Cherenkov radiation.
abstract: Spectrally-isolated narrowband Cherenkov radiation from commercial nonlinear photonic crystal fibers is demonstrated as an ultrafast optical source with a visible tuning range of 485-690 nm, which complementarily extends the near-infrared tuning range of 690-1020 nm from the corresponding femtosecond Ti:sapphire pump laser. Pump-tosignal conversion efficiency routinely surpasses 10%, enabling multimilliwatt visible output across the entire tuning range. Appropriate selection of fiber parameters and pumping conditions efficiently suppresses the supercontinuum generation typically associated with Cherenkov radiation.
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. htu@illinois.edu
authors.forename: Haohua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boppart
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007834:Lasers; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014159:Transducers