Tailoring modulation instabilities and four-wave mixing in dispersion-managed composite liquid-core fibers

Abstract

We show that the ultrafast nonlinear dynamics in supercontinuum generation can be tailored via mixture-based liquid core fibers. Samples containing mixtures of inorganic solvents allow changing dispersion from anomalous to normal, i.e., shifting zero dispersion across pump laser wavelength. A significant control over modulation instability and four-wave mixing has been demonstrated experimentally in record-long (up to 60 cm) samples in agreement with simulations when using sub-psec pulses at 1.555 µm. The smallest concentration ratio yields indications of soliton-fission based supercontinuum generation at soliton numbers that are beyond the coherence limit. The presented dispersion tuning scheme allows creating unprecedented dispersion landscapes for accessing unexplored nonlinear phenomena and selected laser sources.

Multiple Modes-Induced Multi-Pair Cross-Phase Modulation Instability in the Deep Normal Dispersion Regime of a Tellurite High Birefringence Microstructured Optical Fiber

“…Figure 6 shows the output spectra of the tellurite HBMOF at the average pump power of 300, 470, 600 and 920 mW. In contrast to the previous XPMI investigation in optical fibers which are mainly single pair induced by the fundamental mode [1,[3][4][5][13][14][15][16], a three-pair XPMI was obtained in our experiment, induced respectively by LP01, LP11 and LP21. For each mode, with the increase of the pump power, its Stokes sidebands slightly redshifted while the anti-Stokes sidebands slightly blueshifted.…”

“…Being a well-known fundamental nonlinear process, modulational instability (MI) in optical fibers refers to the exponential growth from quantum noise of symmetric sidebands around the pump which comes from the interaction between the nonlinear effect and group velocity dispersion (GVD) [1]- [5]. MI has been widely applied to fiber optical parametric oscillators (FOPOs) [6], all-optical modulators [7], all-optical switching [8], fiber sources producing photon pairs [9], [10] and two-color pulses for nonlinear microscopy [11], [12], etc.…”

Liquid‐Core Optical Fibers—A Dynamic Platform for Nonlinear Photonics

“…2) Robust guidance in anomalous dispersion of a fundamental mode around 1560 nm has been achieved by carefully lowering the refractive index of the core medium by optimizing the concentration of two liquids in a composite-core fiber. [46,105] In all those works, well-distinguishable soliton fission could be demonstrated using a 30 fs pulse. The method comes with the benefit of utilizing a large variety of liquid admixtures, such as health-friendly, highly transparent tetrachloroethylene, highly nonlinear toluene-d8, and nitrobenzene-d5, as demonstrated in the individual works.…”

“…[ 46,59 ] Mixed core compositions allow further index suppression, reaching ZDWs below 1.5$$\umu$$m. [ 104,105 ] We also like to emphasize that some higher‐order modes (e.g., TM 01 , TE 01 , or HE 21 ) also feature significantly lower ZDWs than the corresponding fundamental mode. [ 106,107 ]…”

“…d) Simulation and measurement of FWM signal when using a 1.5 m-long fiber with water-filled cladding. a,b) Reproduced with permission [105]. Copyright 2020, Optica Publishing Group.…”