We report an octave-spanning coherent supercontinuum (SC) fiber laser with excellent noise and polarization properties. This was achieved by pumping a highly birefringent all-normal dispersion (ANDi) photonic crystal fiber with a compact high-power ytterbium femtosecond laser at 1049 nm. This system generates an ultra-flat SC spectrum from 670 nm to 1390 nm with a power spectral density higher than 0.4 mW/nm and a polarization extinction ratio of 17 dB across the entire bandwidth. An average pulse-to-pulse relative intensity noise (RIN) down to 0.54% from 700 nm to 1100 nm has been measured and found to be in good agreement with numerical simulations. This highly-stable broadband source could find strong potential applications in biomedical imaging and spectroscopy where improved signal to noise ratio is essential.

We report on an ytterbium-free erbium-doped aluminophosphosilicate all-fiber laser, producing an output power of 25 W at a wavelength of 1584 nm with a slope efficiency of 30% with respect to the 976 nm absorbed pump power. The simple cavity design proposed takes advantage of fiber Bragg gratings written directly in the gain fiber. The single-mode erbium-doped aluminophosphosilicate fiber was fabricated in-house and was doped with 0.06 mol.% of Er 2 O 3 , 1.77 mol.% of Al 2 O 3 and 1.04 mol.% of P 2 O 5 . The incorporation of aluminium and phosphorus into the fiber core allowed for an increased concentration of erbium without inducing significant clustering, while keeping the numerical aperture low to ensure a single-mode laser operation.

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In this Letter, a swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) instrument employing an innovative scanning protocol for high-speed volumetric rate imaging is demonstrated. The optical source is a tunable laser based on a supercontinuum source pumped with femtosecond pulses, followed by a time-stretched delay fiber. The instrument is equipped with an ultra-fast lateral scanner, based on a KTN crystal, driven at 100 kHz. The letter proves the utility of combining an ultra-fast lateral scanner with an ultra-fast swept laser to provide A-scans at a repetition rate of 40 MHz and an unprecedented 3D-OCT volume acquisition rate of 400 Hz.

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