Femtosecond Optical Parametric Oscillators for Pumping Supercontinuum Sources
Supercontinuum white light generation across the near-IR and mid-IR
A supercontinuum is formed when following the incidence of a laser beam onto a bulk material or a fiber laser, a mix of nonlinear processes take place (especially self-phase modulation (SPM) and/or four-wave mixing (FWM)) that result on the wide spectral broadening of the incoming beam.
Since supercontinuum generation is based on nonlinear processes, the nonlinearity of the supercontinuum material and the maintained intensity of the pump beam are both critical. In recent years, fiber lasers pumping Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF), with extremely high nonlinearity and very low dispersion, have become the most usual optical structure to generate supercontinuum at wavelengths centered at around 1micron.
The generation of supercontinuum at longer wavelengths, requires laser sources at longer wavelengths and optical structures that are adequate for the generation of supercontinuum at these wavelengths.
Radiantis femtosecond OPO, Oria IR can be used for the effective generation of supercontinuum on bulk material or fibers. Radiantis OPO offers:
Tunable Wavelength Output
Tunable wavelength output across 1000 – 4000 nm that can serve as the centered wavelength of the supercontinuum.
High Peak Power
Pulse durations across 100 – 200 fs with average powers up to 1 Watt (at the peak of the spectral range) that deliver the high peak power required for the efficient activation of the nonlinear processes.
Stable Beam Position
Reduced beam pointing with tuning to maintain the alignment when coupling onto a fiber.
Excellent Beam Quality
Excellent beam quality (M2<1.2) for optimum beam focusing.
Reference using the Oria IR for supercontinuum generation
1. Four-wave mixing and octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in a small core hydrogenated amorphous silicon fiber pumped in the mid-infrared.
Shen,1 N. Healy,1 L. Xu,1 H. Y. Cheng,2 T. D. Day,2 J. H. V. Price,1 J. V. Badding,2 and A. C. Peacock.
1,* 1 Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK 2 Department of Chemistry and Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania 16802, USA *Corresponding author: acp@orc.soton.ac.uk Received June 23, 2014; revised September 1, 2014; accepted September 1, 2014; posted September 4, 2014 (Doc. ID 214640); published September 30, 2014.
2. Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in suspended core tellurite microstructured optical fibers.
M.Belal,* L.Xu, P.Horak, L.Shen, X.Feng, M.Ettabib, D.J.Richardson, P.Petropoulos and J.H.V.Price
Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, U.K. *Corresponding author: mob@orc.soton.ac.uk
3. Wavelength conversion and supercontinuum generation in silicon optical fibers.
Anna C. Peacock, Senior Member, IEEE, Joseph Campling, Antoine F. J. Runge, Haonan Ren, Li Shen, Ozan Aktas, Peter Horak, Noel Healy, Ursula J. Gibson, and John Ballato, Fellow, IEEE.
Oria IR
