Benefits of cascaded nonlinear dynamics in hybrid fibers for low-noise supercontinuum generation.
Benefits of cascaded nonlinear dynamics in hybrid fibers for low-noise supercontinuum generation.
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DOI：
10.1364/oe.481970
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发表时间：
2023-02
期刊：
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
P. Hänzi;Benoît Sierro;Zhixin Liu;V. Romano;Anupamaa Rampur;A. Heidt
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
P. Hänzi;Benoît Sierro;Zhixin Liu;V. Romano;Anupamaa Rampur;A. Heidt
具有超低噪声水平的光纤超连续谱（SC）光源的最新发展有助于在广泛的研究课题中推进最先进的技术。然而，同时满足最大化光谱带宽和最小化噪声的应用需求是一个主要的挑战，迄今为止已经通过折衷来解决，通过微调将注入的激光脉冲转换成宽带SC的单个非线性光纤的特性来发现。我们研究了一种混合方法，该方法将非线性动力学分成两个离散光纤，这两个离散光纤针对非线性时间压缩和光谱展宽进行了优化，分别这引入了新的设计自由度，使得可以为SC生成过程的每个阶段选择最佳光纤。通过实验和模拟，我们研究了这种混合方法对三种常见和商业上可用的高度非线性光纤（HNLF）设计的好处，重点是所产生的SC的平坦度，带宽和相对强度噪声。混合全正态色散HNLF脱颖而出，因为它们联合收割机了与孤子动力学相关的宽光谱带宽，具有极低的噪声和正常光谱中已知的平滑光谱。色散非线性混合ANDi HNLF是一种简单且低成本的路线，用于实现超低噪声SC源并缩放其重复率，用于各种应用，如生物光子成像，相干光通信或超快光子学。
The recent development of fiber supercontinuum (SC) sources with ultra-low noise levels has been instrumental in advancing the state-of-the-art in a wide range of research topics. However, simultaneously satisfying the application demands of maximizing spectral bandwidth and minimizing noise is a major challenge that so far has been addressed with compromise, found by fine-tuning the characteristics of a single nonlinear fiber transforming the injected laser pulses into a broadband SC. In this work, we investigate a hybrid approach that splits the nonlinear dynamics into two discrete fibers optimized for nonlinear temporal compression and spectral broadening, respectively. This introduces new design degrees of freedom, making it possible to select the best fiber for each stage of the SC generation process. With experiments and simulations we study the benefits of this hybrid approach for three common and commercially available highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) designs, focusing on flatness, bandwidth and relative intensity noise of the generated SC. In our results, hybrid all-normal dispersion (ANDi) HNLF stand out as they combine the broad spectral bandwidths associated with soliton dynamics with extremely low noise and smooth spectra known from normal dispersion nonlinearities. Hybrid ANDi HNLF are a simple and low-cost route for implementing ultra-low noise SC sources and scaling their repetition rate for various applications such as biophotonic imaging, coherent optical communications, or ultrafast photonics.