Development of a method to overcome the power threshold during supercontinuum generation based on an Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber

Tobias Baselt; Christopher Taudt; Bryan Nelsen; Andrés Fabián Lasagni; Peter Hartmann

doi:10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021207

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11 October 2017 Development of a method to overcome the power threshold during supercontinuum generation based on an Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber

Tobias Baselt, Christopher Taudt, Bryan Nelsen, Andrés Fabián Lasagni, Peter Hartmann

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Optical Engineering, 57(2), 021207 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021207

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography benefits from the high brightness and bandwidth, as well as the spatial coherence of supercontinuum (SC) sources. The increase of spectral power density (SPD) over conventional light sources leads to shorter measuring times and higher resolutions. For some applications, only a portion of the broad spectral range can be used. Therefore, an increase of the SPD in specific limited spectral regions would provide a clear advantage over spectral filtering. This study describes a method to increase the SPD of SC sources by amplifying the excitation wavelength inside of a nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF). An ytterbium-doped PCF was manufactured by a nanopowder process and used in a fiber amplifier setup as the nonlinear fiber medium. The performance of the fiber was compared with a conventional PCF that possesses comparable parameters. Finally, the system as a whole was characterized in reference to common solid-state laser-based photonic SC light sources. An order-of-magnitude improvement of the power density was observed between the wavelengths from 1100 to 1350 nm.

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Tobias Baselt, Christopher Taudt, Bryan Nelsen, Andrés Fabián Lasagni, and Peter Hartmann "Development of a method to overcome the power threshold during supercontinuum generation based on an Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber," Optical Engineering 57(2), 021207 (11 October 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.2.021207

Received: 30 June 2017; Accepted: 15 September 2017; Published: 11 October 2017

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