Super-flat coherent supercontinuum source in As38.8Se61.2 chalcogenide photonic crystal fiber with all-normal dispersion engineering at a very low input energy

Mbaye Diouf; Amine Ben Salem; Rim Cherif; Hamed Saghaei; Ahmadou Wague

doi:10.1364/AO.56.000163

Super-flat coherent supercontinuum source in As_38.8Se_61.2 chalcogenide photonic crystal fiber with all-normal dispersion engineering at a very low input energy

Appl Opt. 2017 Jan 10;56(2):163-169. doi: 10.1364/AO.56.000163.

Authors

Mbaye Diouf, Amine Ben Salem, Rim Cherif, Hamed Saghaei, Ahmadou Wague

PMID: 28085846
DOI: 10.1364/AO.56.000163

Abstract

We numerically report super-flat coherent mid-infrared supercontinuum (MIR-SC) generation in a chalcogenide As_38.8Se_61.2 photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The dispersion and nonlinear parameters of As_38.8Se_61.2 chalcogenide PCFs by varying the diameter of the air holes are engineered to obtain all-normal dispersion (ANDi) with high nonlinearities. We show that launching low-energy 50 fs optical pulses with 0.88 kW peak power (corresponding to pulse energy of 0.05 nJ) at a central wavelength of 3.7 μm into a 5 cm long ANDi-PCF generates a flat-top coherent MIR-SC spanning from 2900 to 4575 nm with a high spectral flatness of 3 dB. This ultra-wide and flattened spectrum has excellent stability and coherence properties that can be used for MIR applications such as medical diagnosis of diseases, atmospheric pollution monitoring, and drug detection.