SUPERCONTINUUM GENERATION WITH LASERS

CIPOTON MADURO
INTRODUCTION
Supercontinuum generation consists in archiving of a full continuous spectra through
propagation light pulses, short and with high power, through nonlinear media. It was
observed for the first time in 1970 and has since then it has been very studied in many
different materials. This is because applications of supercontinuum include coherence
tomography, fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry, characterization of optical devices,
generation of multiple carrier waves in optical fiber communications systems, and more
others.
The term supercontinuum is not archived by a single phenomenon but rather a plethora of
nonlinear effects that guide to a considerable spectral broadening of optical pulses. The
involved nonlinear effects depend on the dispersion in the material, self-phase modulation
(SPM), Raman scattering, phase matching and others.
Supercontinuum light is the result to get together the broadness of lamp lights and the
brightness of a laser. Incandescent and fluorescent lamps, like the ones made from tungsten
halogens or xenon, radiate with a very broad spectrum (400 nm to 1700 nm approximately),
but the intensity is limited due to the quality of the filament or the efficiency during the gas
excitation process. Moreover, since the light is not coherent, the transmission the light
through an optical fiber usually results into a low power and low brightness source of light.
Lasers are like the opposite, they have high spatial coherence and very high brightness,
which is very favorable for enables optimum transmission to a fiber. Nevertheless, lasers are
usually monochromatic, and for this reason, if more than one wavelength is required, more
than one laser should be used. A supercontinuum source crosses this line, providing a highly
broad spectrum band at the same time that offers a high brightness.
There are several ways of getting Supercontinuum light, in this report we will look closely to
fiber-based ways of archiving it. In more detail we well focus in the paper [1] by the Tokyo
University that archived supercontinuum using Erbium Fiber in 2005 with a completely new
technique and later we well compare it with some actual and more general ways of doing it.
APPLICATION DETAILS
In 2005 researchers of the University of Tokyo demonstrated a compact way of obtaining
superconituum using non-linear optics. They placed a piece of non-linear dispersion shifted
fiber inside the resonator of a laser (instead of in the output beam of the laser) in order to
obtain much higher powers. The laser also had a five meter Erbium-doped fiber to provide
enough gain. Similar device were created before, but they used high-power pumps since the
non-linear medium was in the output of the laser. Using this new method, the researchers
found that even at very low power pump the erbium peak had a much broader bandwidth
than when the non-linear fiber was absent. At that time they did not truly know the reason of
this effect, but they did suspect it was because some modulation instability. They also noticed
how supercontinuum extended to wavelengths shorten than the erbium laser line.
We can now explain that principle for the generation of the supercontinuum as follows. The
laser starts lasing at both the peak of the non-linear fiber and the pump laser wavelength. As
the pump power increases, the continuous wave lasing at one or both peak wavelengths
generates pulses with random repetition through modulation instability effect in the
anomalous dispersion fiber. At higher powers, the supercontinuum is generated mostly by
stimulated Raman scattering and intra-pulse stimulated Raman scattering effects.
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RELATED APPLICATIONS AND STATE OF THE ART

Nowadays supercontinuum sources have many applications which may go from optical
coherence tomography, making sensors, device characterization and even fiber-optic
gyroscopes. Today, the bast majority of supercontinuum generation is made using fiberbased technology. Fiber-based supercontinuum sources are of very high interest due to their
attractive features, such as simple, stable design, low potential cost, compact package, and
high reliability. We got to the point that there are tones of available products to buy that
directly produce this kind of light.
In general, a fiber-based supercontinuum source consists of three parts: seed light source,
fiber amplifier and nonlinear fiber.
The seed light can be produced by a continuous-wave laser with narrow linewidth (like the
Erbium fiber), by a continuous-wave amplified with spontaneous emission source, or by
pulsed light sources with verst short pulse durations (from smaller than nanoseconds). This
seed light is amplified by the fiber amplifier to the level which is sufficient to generate
supercontinuum through various nonlinear effects in the fiber. The fiber amplifier has a high
gain and a spectral bandwidth covering the wavelength range of the seed light.
When the seed light is created by a continuous-wave amplified with spontaneous emission
source the generation of supercontinuum is done in a different way. An important
improvement of the spectral broadening efficiency generated by an smart fiber design allows
the use of amplified with spontaneous emission light-source to generate supercontinuum.
This simplifies the entire system and improves reliability. Unlike the narrow linewidth lasers in
which the Raman effect dominated supercontinuum generation, here the supercontinuum
generation is maximized by changing dispersion coefficient along the nonlinear fiber.
The third approach, using short pulse durations (usually femto seconds) consists in
amplifying the pulse though an erbium doped fiber amplifier and then send that pulse to a
one kilometer long (or even more) non-linear normal fiber, just as with the Erbium fiber. It has
been observed that with a similar methodology the same effect can be obtained.
To conclude, we have seen that there are different methods to acquire supercontinuum light,
and that right now is a technique used so broadly that there are lots of commercial devices
that generate this particular kind of light. This tremendous research is mainly due the extend
area of applications it cover. I want to finalize with an image that has been shocking to me, is
about the number of citations of papers related with supercontinuum during the pasts years,
where one can see the exponential tendency that is following.

Image 1: Citations of Articles on Supercontinuum by Robert Alfano

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REFERENCES
[1] Breck Hitz, Erbium Fiber Laser Generates Supercontinuum, Photonics Spectra
November 2005 pag. 19
[2] Robert Alfano, On the supercontinuum: history and future applications, 2014.
[3] J. M. Dudley, J. R. Taylor, Supercontinuum Generation in Optical Fibers, Cambridge
2010.
[4] Shenping Li, A. Boh Ruffin, Dmitri V. Kuksenkov, Ming-Jun Li, and Daniel A.
Nolan,Supercontinuum generation in optical fibers (2007).
[5] Lianghong Yin, Qiang Lin, and Govind P. Agrawal, Soliton fission and supercontinuum
generation in silicon waveguides (2007)
[6] A.V.Avddokhin, S.V.Popov, and J.R.Taylor, Continuous-wave, high-power, Raman
continuum generation in holy fibers, (2003).
[7] Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, supercontinuum
[8] RP Photonics Encyclopedia, supercontinuum Generation
[9] NKT Photonics, Supercontinuum Generation in Photonic Crystal Fibres

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