title: Suppressing Short-term Polarization Noise and Related Spectral Decoherence in All-normal Dispersion Fiber Supercontinuum Generation.
abstract: The supercontinuum generated exclusively in the normal dispersion regime of a nonlinear fiber is widely believed to possess low optical noise and high spectral coherence. The recent development of flattened all-normal dispersion fibers has been motivated by this belief to construct a general-purpose broadband coherent optical source. Somewhat surprisingly, we identify a large short-term polarization noise in this type of supercontinuum generation that has been masked by the total-intensity measurement in the past, but can be easily detected by filtering the supercontinuum with a linear polarizer. Fortunately, this hidden intrinsic noise and the accompanied spectral decoherence can be effectively suppressed by using a polarization-maintaining all-normal dispersion fiber. A polarization-maintaining coherent supercontinuum laser is thus built with a broad bandwidth (780-1300 nm) and high spectral power (~1 mW/nm).
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Youbo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: NKT Photonics A/S, Blokken 84, 3460 Birkerød, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lyngsø
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Sixian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: You
authors.affiliation: Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: William L
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Haohua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boppart
keywords: Supercontinuum generation; fiber nonlinear optics; laser noise; optical pulse compression