Abstract

Broad continua generation has been recently demonstrated by using holey fibers (HF) pumped with high-intensity pulses from Ti:sapphire, solid-state, krypton, and microchip lasers.^1–3 Single mode propagation in the wide transparency region of silica combined with the small core size dramatically reduce thresholds of major non-linear optical processes in holey fibers, and often hundred-Watts of peak power are sufficient to initiate stimulated Raman scattering³ and SPM related continuum generation. Four-wave mixing can also be engaged by manipulating the geometry of the fiber and reducing the combined dispersion. This means that single-mode, quasi-cw, seeded, infrared fiber sources, with 10–15 W average and up to I kW peak power budgets, can be efficiently applied to pumping of holey fibers resulting in efficient, all-fiber format, high spectral power density continuum sources.

© 2002 Optical Society of America