Abstract

Sources of coherent white-light (supercontinuum, SC) found many applications ranging from frequency metrology and optical coherence tomography to medicine and others (for an overview see [1]). A dramatic conversion from narrowband light to two-octave broad SC was achieved by the application of microstructure fibers (MF). The SC generation in MFs in the anomalous dispersion range is connected with the splitting of the input pulse into several fundamental solitons, which emit phase-matched non-solitonic radiation [2]. For many applications, the noise and coherence properties of this octave-spanning white light are of crucial importance. Previous studies have shown that a sufficient level of coherence of the SCs can only be obtained using pulses with a relatively small intensity and short durations [3]. In this report we show that the contribution of the plasma suppresses coherence degradation for soliton-induced high-power SCs in metallic hollow waveguides.

© 2009 IEEE