Sébastien Venck1, François St‐Hilaire2,3, Laurent Brilland1, Amar Nath Ghosh3, Radwan Chahal1, Céline Caillaud1, Marcello Meneghetti4, Johann Trolès4, Franck Joulain5, Solenn Cozic5, Samuel Poulain5, Guillaume Huss6, Martin Rochette2, John M. Dudley3, Thibaut Sylvestre3
1SelenOptics Campus Beaulieu Rennes 35000 France
2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering McGill University Montréal H3A 0E9 Canada
3Institut FEMTO‐ST, CNRS UMR 6174 Université Bourgogne Franche‐Comté Besançon 25030 France
4Université de Rennes CNRS, ISCR‐UMR 6226 Rennes 35000 France
5Le Verre Fluoré Campus Kerlann Bruz 35170 France
6LEUKOS 37 rue Henri Giffard Limoges 87280 France
Tóm tắt
AbstractMid‐infrared supercontinuum (mid‐IR SC) sources in the 2–20 µm molecular fingerprint region are in high demand for a wide range of applications including optical coherence tomography, remote sensing, molecular spectroscopy, and hyperspectral imaging. Herein, mid‐IR SC generation is investigated in a cascaded silica‐ZBLAN‐chalcogenide fiber system directly pumped with a commercially available pulsed fiber laser operating in the telecommunications window at 1.55 µm. This fiber‐based system is shown to generate a flat broadband mid‐IR SC covering the entire range from 2 to 10 µm with several tens of mW of output power. This technique paves the way for low cost, practical, and robust broadband SC sources in the mid‐IR without the requirement of mid‐infrared pump sources or Thulium‐doped fiber amplifiers. A fully realistic numerical model used to simulate the nonlinear pulse propagation through the cascaded fiber system is also described and the numerical results are used to discuss the physical processes underlying the spectral broadening in the cascaded system. Finally, recommendations are provided for optimizing the current cascaded system based on the simulation results.
