Propagation of ultrashort pulses in a nonlinear two-core photonic crystal fiber

We analyze the propagation of ultrashort pulses in a nonlinear two-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) by solving a pair of coupled-mode equations that include all the significant linear and nonlinear terms. In particular, we highlight the fact that the coupling coefficient dispersion can cause significant pulse distortion over a short length of a two-core PCF. We also study all-optical switching and multi-frequency generation and obtain a reasonable agreement with recent experimental data.     

Parametrically amplified ultrashort pulses from a shaped photonic crystal fiber supercontinuum

By seeding a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier with a photonic crystal fiber supercontinuum, temporally well-defined amplified output pulses have been generated with durations down to 13 fs. The phase of the supercontinuum seed has been characterized by the ZAP-SPIDER technique and can be tailored with a femtosecond pulse shaper. Thus, a very flexible source for arbitrarily shaped, amplified ultrashort laser pulses has been realized.     

All fiber supercontinuum light source using photonic crystal fibers pumped by nanosecond fiber laser pulses

A novel compact supercontinuum (SC) source using the single mode photonic crystal fibers (PCF) pumped with an all fiber MOPA fiber laser is demonstrated experimentally. A bandwidth of 700 nm is achieved by operating the pumping fiber laser at a wavelength of 1064 nm, pulse duration of 10 ns, repetition rate of 50 kHz and peak power of 1 kW. The SC generation is initiated through modulation instability (MI) which breakups the nanosecond pump pulses into picosecond or femtosecond pulses, and further broadened through nonlinear effects of PCF.     

Frequency doubling of ultrashort pulses in a nonlinear photonic strontium tetraborate crystal

The second harmonic generation (SHG) of the femtosecond titanium-sapphire laser radiation was experimentally studied in the mode of nonlinear diffraction in the nonlinear photonic strontium tetraborate crystal. The spectrum of reciprocal lattice vectors of domain structures includes components responsible for the efficient frequency-tunable SHG in the spectral range of 355–510 nm. The maximum SHG efficiency was 1.9%. The SHG spectrum narrowing does not exceed 10–20%. The measured spectral dependence of the nonlinear diffraction angle is in good agreement with calculation.     

Dependence of the brillouin frequency shift on strain and temperature in a photonic crystal fiber

The dependence of the Brillouin frequency shift on strain in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) was measured at a wavelength of 1320 nm for the first time to the authors' knowledge. Together with measurements of the dependence of the Brillouin frequency shift on temperature in the PCF, we demonstrate the feasibility of the highly precise simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain by use of the PCF in a distributed Brillouin sensing system with a spatial resolution of 15 cm.     

Matched second-harmonic generation of ultrashort laser pulses in photonic crystals

It is shown that one-dimensional photonic bandgap structures are capable of simultaneously satisfying the phase and group-velocity matching conditions for second-harmonic generation involving extremely short light pulses. When these conditions are satisfied, an optical frequency doubler utilizing photonic bandgap structures provides a means for increasing the rate of growth of the second-harmonic signal as a function of the nonlinear-optical interaction length relative to structures designed for quasi-matched interactions and affords possibilities for enhancing the frequency doubling efficiencies independently of the matching length in the bulk nonlinear material. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 70, No. 12, 800–805 (25 December 1999)     

Optical pulse compression of ultrashort laser pulses in a multi-hollow-core fiber

By numerical simulations and analysis, we proposed a fiber with multi-hollow-core structure for optical pulse compression of high energy ultrashort laser pulses. In this scheme, different parts of a high-energy flat-top pulse are coupled into different hollow cores of such fiber and each of the cores functions as an independent traditional hollow-core fiber compressor. After the multi-hollow-core fiber, the output beams are collimated and compressed to few-cycle level. Then they can be focused to ultra-high intensity. This method can easily be scaled to compressing pulses of large beam size with high energy without limit in principle.     

Off-axis pumping of a photonic crystal fiber laser

We present a new method for free space pumping of double-clad photonic crystal fiber lasers and amplifiers. The method is based on off-axis injection of the pump beam, exploiting the relatively high numerical aperture of the photonic crystal fiber cladding. It prevents feedback from the laser into the pump source, does not require any special treatment to the fiber, and could lead to a more compact resonator. Experimental results with the new pumping method show improved laser performance.     

High power Q-switched Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber laser producing sub-10 ns pulses

We report on a Q-switched fiber laser producing pulse durations well below 10 ns by using a short-length ytterbium-doped rod-type photonic crystal fiber as gain medium. At repetition rates up to 100 kHz pulse energies up to 0.5 mJ and average powers in excess of 30 W have been obtained in single-transverse mode beam quality. The compact short pulse laser system possesses further power and energy scaling potential.     

Supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber using femtosecond pulses

Supercontinuum (SC) generation in photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is demonstrated using an amplified femtosecond stretched pulses. The stretched pulse is obtained from a mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser and operates at 1564 nm with a repetition rate of 8.27 MHz and a pulse width of 340 fs. Using a 50 m long PCF, broad SC spectra are observed starting from 1220 and 1050 nm for the corresponding 5.1 and 177 kW pump and spanning a wavelength region of more than 1750 nm. At a maximum peak pump power of 177 kW, flat SC which extends over bandwidths of 660 and 486 nm are obtained using 50 and 100 m piece of PCF respectively. However, the output power level is higher for the 100 m PCF especially at longer wavelength region.     

Q-switched thulium-doped photonic crystal fiber laser

We report a novel, Tm-doped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) actively Q-switched oscillator that provides ~8.9 kW peak power with 435 μJ, 49 ns pulses at 10 kHz repetition rate at 2 μm wavelength. This fiber has a mode-field area >1000 μm2, the largest of any flexible PCF providing diffraction-limited beam quality to the best of our knowledge. As an application, the oscillator is used as pump to generate >350 nm broadening in ~50 m of SMF-28 fiber.     

High-energy femtosecond photonic crystal fiber laser

We report the generation of high-energy high-peak power pulses in an all-normal dispersion fiber laser featuring large-mode-area photonic crystal fibers. The self-starting chirped-pulse fiber oscillator delivers 11 W of average power at 15.5 MHz repetition rate, resulting in 710 nJ of pulse energy. The output pulses are dechirped outside the cavity from 7 ps to nearly transform-limited duration of 300 fs, leading to pulse peak powers as high as 1.9 MW. Numerical simulations reveal that pulse shaping is dominated by the amplitude modulation and spectral filtering provided by a resonant semiconductor saturable absorber.     

Transmission characteristics of photonic crystal fiber gas cell used in frequency stabilized laser

We measure the transmission characteristics of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber （HC-PCF） gas cells with ferrule- and fusion-spliced configurations, and near- and far-field images of the HC-PCF are observed. Results show that the center of mass （COM） of the far-field image varies with the laser frequency and temperature, and the moving COM relates to the oscillatory transmission. Using a model of the spatial interference, we first demonstrate that mainly the modes with asymmetric phase distributions affect the COM position. The frequency stabilization performances of the lasers are compared. The fusion-spliced gas cell shows better performance than the ferrule-spliced one.     

Hollow-core photonic crystal fibres for delivery and compression of ultrashort optical pulses

We describe the use of tapered hollow-core photonic crystal fibres for delivery and compression of ultrashort optical pulses. We demonstrate delivery of transform-limited pulses with less than 100 fs pulse length and above 50 nJ energy through 8 m of fibre, in a single transverse mode.     

Self-channeling of subgigawatt femtosecond laser pulses in a ground-state waveguide induced in the hollow core of a photonic crystal fiber

Femtosecond laser pulses with powers below the blowup threshold for self-focused beams are shown to experience spatial self-action in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers filled with argon, nitrogen, and atmospheric air. Regardless of the transverse field distribution at the input of the fiber, the output beam pattern in this regime tends to a circularly symmetric profile, corresponding to a ground-state waveguide induced by laser pulses inside a hollow fiber.     

Storage and release of femtosecond laser pulses in a resonant photonic crystal

Femtosecond laser pulses with suitable pulse areas are shown to decelerate and stop inside a resonant photonic crystal. The release of the stored fields can be achieved through pulse collision by use of an external optical pulse as a control field. The duty cycle efficiency of the storage and release of light is shown to be as much as 96%. The proposed technique is applied to a real photonic system with finite thickness of atomic layers.     

Distortion-free delivery of nanojoule femtosecond pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser through a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate propagation of femtosecond pulses in the 800-nm range through a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber with preserved temporal and spectral profiles for pulse energies up to 4.6 nJ. Without the use of a prechirping unit, 170-fs pulses were transmitted essentially undistorted at 812 nm, near the zero-dispersion wavelength. Because of the air guidance of pulses, intensity-dependent nonlinear effects were minimal, with only 15% pulse broadening occurring at 350-mW average output power. This fiber thus is excellently suited for applications that require single-mode delivery of high-energy ultrashort pulses to the fiber output face such as, for example, miniaturized multiphoton microscopes.     

用紧束缚方法描述光子晶体缺陷耦合的共振频率移动

通常采用含两个耦合参数的紧束缚近似，就能很好地描述光子晶体缺陷因耦合而导致的共振频率分裂.然而，缺陷耦合造成的共振频率移动，即包含奇数个缺陷的耦合系统的中央共振频率位置与原来单缺陷时的共振频率位置存在差异，则只有采用含三个耦合参数的严格紧束缚方法才能正确描述.根据耦合参数与共振频率的关系，利用三缺陷耦合系统的模拟计算结果确定了三个耦合参数的具体值，从而在理论上能够预言由任意个缺陷构成的耦合系统的共振频率的移动和分裂.理论预言与基于有限时域差分法的数值计算完全相符.     

光纤激光器直接输出的高功率贝塞尔超短脉冲

构建了一种能够直接输出高功率贝塞尔超短脉冲的光纤激光放大器. 该方案基于在光纤端面特殊设计和制备的微型负轴锥镜, 针对常规超短脉冲光纤激光放大系统所设计, 不需要引入其他分立整形器件, 避免了目前基于轴锥透镜产生贝塞尔光束的通用方法所带来的额外烦琐准直工作, 极大简化了产生贝塞尔光束的方法. 其中的微型负轴锥镜由聚焦粒子束刻蚀法在一段掺镱大模场光子晶体光纤的端面制备, 它和光纤激光系统中的固有准直透镜构成了集成化的光束整形器件. 基于数值模拟结果成功搭建的系统与理论设计一致, 直接输出了在米量级具有高度准直无衍射特性的啁啾皮秒贝塞尔超短脉冲波包, 平均功率高达10.1 W, 对应脉冲能量178 nJ, 经过光栅对压缩后脉冲宽度可达140 fs. 关键词： 衍射 超短脉冲产生 光纤器件 光纤激光器     

Interaction of ultrashort elliptically polarized laser pulses with nonlinear helical photonic metamaterial

The effect of nonlinear properties of a material with a periodic structural cell (three-dimensional spiral) on the specificity of transmission and reflection of elliptically polarized laser pulses normally incident on the metamaterial is studied using the finite-difference time-domain method. An analysis of the hodograph of electric-field strength vector showed that an increase in the peak intensity of a linearly polarized laser pulse incident on a sample leads to an increase in the orthogonal component of the electric-field strength vector in the pulse transmitted through the medium. When pulses containing few electric-field periods are incident on a metamaterial, the latter demonstrates radically different optical properties for right- and left-handed circularly polarized light passing through the medium. It was shown that an increase in the intensity of a right-handed (left-handed) circularly polarized ultrashort pulse, incident on a sample composed of a rather large number of right-handed (left-handed) spirals made of nonlinearmaterial, widens the frequency range within which the incident light is almost entirely reflected from the medium.