Open AccessHigh power tunable femtosecond soliton source using hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber, and its use for frequency doubling
Author(s) -
Frédéric Gérôme,
J.C. Knight,
W. Wadsworth,
P. Dupriez,
J. Clowes
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.16.002381
Subject(s) - femtosecond , materials science , photonic crystal fiber , optics , fiber laser , optoelectronics , energy conversion efficiency , soliton , photonic crystal , fiber , self phase modulation , laser , nonlinear optics , wavelength , physics , nonlinear system , quantum mechanics , composite material
We report a high power tunable femtosecond soliton-based source using a simple combination of fiber-amplified pulses at 1064 nm and hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber. Compression of 5.5 ps input pulses, strongly chirped by self phase modulation in the amplifier, results in stable 520 fs-soliton formation with 77% conversion efficiency after only 8m propagation in the hollow-core fiber. The Raman self-frequency shift of the solitons was used to provide 33 nm wavelength tuneability. The transform-limited output pulses were frequency doubled using a nonlinear crystal with high conversion efficiency of 60% to demonstrate a femtosecond green laser tunable from 534 nm to 548 nm with 180 nJ pulse energy.