Unlocking the true potential of optical spectroscopy on the nanoscale requires development of stable and low-noise laser sources. Here, we have developed a low-noise supercontinuum (SC) source based on an all-normal dispersion fiber pumped by a femtosecond fiber laser and demonstrate high resolution, spectrally resolved near-field measurements in the near-infrared (NIR) region. Specifically, we explore the reduced-noise requirements for aperture-less scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM), including inherent pulse-to-pulse fluctuation of the SC. We use our SC light source to demonstrate the first NIR, spectrally resolved s-SNOM measurement, a situation where state-of-the-art commercial SC sources are too noisy to be useful. We map the propagation of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waves on monocrystalline gold platelets in the wavelength region of 1.34–1.75 μm in a single measurement, thereby characterizing experimentally the dispersion curve of the SPP in the NIR. Our results represent a technological breakthrough that has the potential to enable a wide range of new applications of low-noise SC sources in near-field studies.

The nonlinear frequency conversion of low-temporal-coherent light holds a variety of applications and has attracted considerable interest. However, its physical mechanism remains relatively unexplored, and the conversion efficiency and bandwidth are extremely insufficient. Here, considering the instantaneous broadband characteristic, we establish a model of second harmonic generation (SHG) of low-temporal-coherent pulse, and reveal its differences from the coherent conditions. It is found that the second harmonic (SH) of low-temporal-coherent light is produced by not only the degenerate SH processes but also crossed sum-frequency processes. On the basis of this, we propose a method for realizing low-temporal-coherent SHG with high efficiency and broad bandwidth, and experimentally demonstrate a conversion efficiency up to 70% with a bandwidth of 3.1 THz (2.9 nm centered at 528 nm). To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest efficiency and broadest bandwidth of low-temporal-coherent SHG, and its efficiency is almost the same with that of the narrowband coherent condition. Furthermore, the spectral evolution characteristics of the broadband low-temporal-coherent pulse in SHG process are revealed in experiments, that the SH power spectral density (PSD) is proportional to the self-convolution of the fundamental wave PSD, which is greatly different from that of the coherent process. Our research opens a door for the study of the low-coherent nonlinear optical processes. * These authors contributed equally to this Letter. † liufenggyq@siom.ac.cn

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