title: Control of pulse-to-pulse fluctuations in visible supercontinuum.
abstract: Long-pulse supercontinuum sources are initiated by modulation instability and consequently suffer from stochastic shot-to-shot variations of their spectral power density. In this paper, we provide a measurement of pulse-to-pulse fluctuations over the whole supercontinuum spectrum, and we show that their spectral dependence follows the group index curve of the fiber. Then, we demonstrate a significant reduction of supercontinuum pulse-to-pulse fluctuations in the visible by using a photonic crystal fiber with longitudinally tailored guidance properties. We finally show numerically that this new source would allow a significant improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio in fluorescence microscopy.
authors.affiliation: Université Lille 1, IRCICA, FR CNRS 3024, Laboratoire PhLAM, UMR CNRS 8523, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. alexandre.kudlinski@univ-lille1.fr
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kudlinski
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Barviau
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leray
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Spriet
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Héliot
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mussot
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005246:Feedback; D008029:Lighting / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation*