Deep-UV-enhanced supercontinuum generated in a tapered gas-filled photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

We present the use of a linearly down-tapered gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber in a single stage, pumped with pulses from a compact infrared (IR) laser source, to generate a supercontinuum (SC) carrying significant spectral power in the deep ultraviolet (UV) [200–300 nm]. The generated SC extends from the near IR down to ∼ 213 n m with 0.58 mW/nm and down to ∼ 220 n m with 0.83 mW/nm in the deep UV.

High‐Power Laser Systems

“…[210] This tightly bound fiber waveguide provides high-quality beam quality output and significantly enhances the effective nonlinear action length L eff of the laser. Although this powerful nonlinear effect has opened up many new areas which are difficult to reach by solid-state lasers, including Raman amplifier with extended wavelength or self-cleanup; [211][212][213] low noise amplifiers by stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and four-wave mixing (FWM); [214,215] supercontinuum excitation from vacuum ultraviolet to mid-infrared; [216][217][218][219][220] and extraordinary dynamic phenomena of spatiotemporal soliton; [221][222][223] etc. The nonlinearities often need to be suppressed effectively at most high-power CW and pulsed lasers resonators and amplifiers.…”

“…Apart from the large mode area and endless SM properties, purposeful manipulation of fiber structure endows PCFs with enhanced nonlinearity, modified dispersion, high birefringence, and other unique optical characteristics that facilitate their application to cover not only high power laser but also many other disparate fields such as nonlinear optics, [216] interferometry, [496] beam deliver, [497] sensing, [498,499] microscopy, [500] etc. For example, gas-filled hollow-core PCFs (HC-PCF) with flexible pressure tunability of the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) allows the generation of supercontinuum from the deep-or vacuumultraviolet region [217,219] to mid-infrared. [501] Recently, supercontinuum generation has extended down to a record 124 nm [217] and up to 4 μm [502] based on hydrogen-filled kagomé-style HC-PCF and argon-filled anti-resonant HC-PCF, respectively.…”

Adjusting the transmission bands of the negative curvature hollow-core fibers

“…Microfurnance [5] or oxy-butane flame [6] while controlling the stress might allow the processing of longer lengths of fibers. Currently, we are investigating developing these approaches, however, such a short length of the processed fibers still can be applied for microwave discharge excitation [7], generation of wavelength-tunable deep-ultraviolet pulses [8], and deep-UV-enhanced supercontinuum generations [9].…”

Calculation of Bandwidth of Multimode Step-Index Polymer Photonic Crystal Fibers

“…The hollow core of a PCF, on the other hand, is also possible [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. PCFs have been used in a variety of applications, including dispersion [ 14 , 15 , 16 ], supercontinuum production [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], birefringence [ 20 ], optofluidics [ 21 ], wavelength conversion [ 22 , 23 ] and sensing [ 24 , 25 ]. A typical numerical aperture of PCFs is NA = 0.5–0.6 [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].…”