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Supercontinuum Generation

Acronym: SCG

Definition: a nonlinear process for strong spectral broadening of light

More general term: nonlinear frequency conversion

German: Superkontinuum-Erzeugung

Category: nonlinear optics

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Cite the article using its DOI: https://doi.org/10.61835/bxg

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Supercontinuum generation is a process where laser light is converted to light with a very broad spectral bandwidth (i.e., low temporal coherence), i.e., a super-wide continuous optical spectrum. This means that the temporal coherence is very low (but with important restrictions – see below!), whereas the spatial coherence usually remains high.

The spectral broadening is usually accomplished by propagating light pulses through a strongly nonlinear device. For example, one may send an intense (amplified) ultrashort pulse through a piece of bulk glass. Alternatively, one can send pulses with much lower pulse energy through an optical fiber, having a waveguide structure which allows for a long propagation length with small effective mode area. Of special interest are photonic crystal fibers, mainly due to their unusual chromatic dispersion characteristics, which can allow a strong nonlinear interaction over a significant length of fiber. Even with fairly moderate input powers, very broad spectra are achieved; this leads to a kind of “laser rainbow”.

In many cases, optical fibers are used for supercontinuum generation. Frequently, one uses photonic crystal fibers, which can be made with tailored chromatic dispersion properties and often also exhibit increased nonlinearity due to strong mode confinement. Some special solutions, which are less widely used, are briefly mentioned in the following:

  • In some cases, tapered fibers are used [6], which provide a very strong nonlinear interaction over a short length.
  • There have been demonstrations where the air holes of a photonic crystal fiber was filled either with a gas (which may e.g. be Raman-active) or with a highly nonlinear liquid such as carbon tetrachloride [36] or toluene [34].

Figures 1 and 2 show numerically simulated results for supercontinuum generation in a very short piece of fiber. In many cases, however, much longer fibers are used – then usually in conjunction with much lower peak powers.

supercontinuum, time domain
supercontinuum, frequency domain
Figure 1: Numerically simulated supercontinuum, assuming that 20-fs laser pulses propagate through a 2-mm long photonic crystal fiber.

The time domain (upper graph) exhibits a complicated multi-peak structure, whereas the optical spectrum (lower graph, with logarithmic scale) has a significant power spectral density over more than one optical octave. The simulation took into account chromatic dispersion, the Kerr nonlinearity (leading to self-phase modulation and four-wave mixing) with self-steepening, and Raman scattering. Such simulations can be done with the RP Fiber Power software.

supercontinuum generation
Figure 2: Evolution of the optical spectrum along the fiber (vertical axis).

After ≈ 1 mm propagation distance, further spectral broadening is weak because the peak power has decreased a lot. Note that the intensity color scale (bar on the right-hand side) is logarithmic, spanning a 40-dB range.

supercontinuum dispersed at a diffraction grating
Figure 3: The white-light output of a high-power supercontinuum source is spatially dispersed by a diffraction grating in order to demonstrate the spectral content. The beam path has been made visible with a fog machine. The photograph has been kindly provided by NKT Photonics.

The Physics of Supercontinuum Generation

The physical mechanisms behind supercontinuum generation in fibers depend very much on the chromatic dispersion and length of the fiber (or other nonlinear medium), the pulse duration, the initial peak power and the pump wavelength.

When femtosecond pulses are used, the spectral broadening can be dominantly caused by self-phase modulation. In the anomalous dispersion regime, the combination of self-phase modulation and dispersion can lead to complicated soliton dynamics, including the split-up of higher-order solitons into multiple fundamental solitons (soliton fission).

For pumping with picosecond or nanosecond pulses, Raman scattering and four-wave mixing can also play a vital role.

Supercontinuum generation is even possible with continuous-wave beams, when using multi-watt laser beams in long fibers; Raman scattering and four-wave mixing are very important in that regime.

The noise properties of the generated continua can also be very different in different parameter regions. In some cases, e.g. with self-phase modulation being the dominant mechanism and the dispersion being normal, the process is very deterministic, and the phase coherence of the generated supercontinuum pulses can be very high, even under conditions of strong spectral broadening. In other cases (e.g. involving a modulational instability or high Raman gain), the process can be extremely sensitive to the slightest fluctuations (including quantum noise) e.g. in the input pulses, so that the properties of the spectrally broadened pulses vary substantially from pulse to pulse. Substantial noise can also arise from strong Raman gain in spectral regions where the power spectral density is not yet substantial; that often happens for relatively long pump pulses.

Generally, it is desirable to use a highly nonlinear fiber, usually having a particularly small effective mode area. However, suitable chromatic dispersion properties are usually most important; inappropriate dispersion properties can hardly be compensated with a smaller mode area.

The strongly nonlinear nature of supercontinuum generation makes it difficult to understand intuitively all the details of the interaction, or to predict relations with analytical tools. Therefore, numerical pulse propagation modeling (often with special precautions due to the extreme optical bandwidth) is required for the analysis of such processes. Intuitive pictures or analytical guidelines can be tested by comparison with results from such numerical models.

Coherence Properties

It is worth spending some thoughts on the coherence properties of supercontinua. The spatial coherence (considering the cross-spectral density) is usually very high, particularly when the source involves a single-mode fiber, which is often the case. On the other hand, the high spectral bandwidth suggests a very low temporal coherence. However, supercontinua generated from periodic pulse trains can still have a high temporal coherence in the sense that there can be strong correlations between the electric fields corresponding to different pulses, if the spectral broadening mechanism is highly reproducible. That kind of coherence is in fact essential for the generation of frequency combs in photonic crystal fibers, and it may or may not be achieved depending on parameters such as the seed pulse duration and energy, fiber length, and fiber dispersion.

The initially surprising discrepancy between high bandwidth and high temporal coherence can be resolved by realizing the shape of the field correlation function: it has a very narrow peak around zero time delay (with a width of e.g. a few femtoseconds), but there are also additional peaks with comparable height at time delays corresponding to integer multiples of the pulse period. Hence there is low temporal coherence in the sense of vanishing correlations for most time delays, but high temporal coherence in the sense of strong correlations for some large time delays.

Applications

Supercontinuum light sources are generally used for purposes where one requires light with a broad optical bandwidth (i.e., low temporal coherence) but at the same time a high degree of spatial coherence, so that the light can be well collimated and focused (with some limitations by chromatic aberrations). For example, one often uses such a source in conjunction with a monochromator as a tunable light source in spectroscopy. In comparison with a tunable laser, a supercontinuum source can usually cover a much wider wavelength range. On the other hand, its power spectral density is far lower, i.e., one obtains only a low power e.g. transmitted through a narrowband monochromator.

Other applications like fluorescence microscopy, CARS microscopy, fluorescence lifetime imaging (e.g. for bio-imaging), flow cytometry, the characterization of optical devices, the generation of multiple carrier waves in optical fiber communications systems, and optical coherence tomography can similarly profit from supercontinuum sources.

One may also use a supercontinuum source for seeding an ultrafast amplifier (frequently an optical parametric amplifier), where it is important to have a broad input bandwidth.

Supercontinuum generation also has other applications in ultrafast laser physics, for example for the detection and stabilization of the carrier–envelope offset frequency. That is important in optical frequency metrology.

Suppliers

The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains 28 suppliers for supercontinuum sources. Among them:

Bibliography

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[33]R. A. Martinez et al., “Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation from 1.6 to >11 μm using concatenated step-index fluoride and chalcogenide fibers”, Opt. Lett. 43 (2), 296 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.43.000296
[34]V. T. Hoang et al., “All-normal dispersion supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers with large hollow cores infiltrated with toluene”, Optical Materials Express 8 (11), 3568 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1364/OME.8.003568
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[36]V. T. Hoang et al., “Supercontinuum generation in an all-normal dispersion large core photonic crystal fiber infiltrated with carbon tetrachloride”, Optical Materials Express 9 (5), 2264 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1364/OME.9.002264
[37]W. P. Putnam et al., “Few-cycle, carrier–envelope-phase-stable laser pulses from a compact supercontinuum source”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 36 (2), A93 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.36.000A93
[38]J. Lu et al., “Octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in nanoscale lithium niobate waveguides”, Opt. Lett. 44 (6), 1492 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.44.001492
[39]M. Yu et al., “Coherent two-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in lithium-niobate waveguides”, Opt. Lett. 44 (5), 1222 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.44.001222
[40]K. Tarnowski et al., “Compact all-fiber source of coherent linearly polarized octave-spanning supercontinuum based on normal dispersion silica fiber”, Sci Rep 9, 12313 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48726-9
[41]J. Lu et al., “Ultraviolet to mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in single-crystalline aluminum nitride waveguides”, Opt. Lett. 45 (16), 4499 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.398257
[42]S. Vasilyev et al., “Low-threshold supercontinuum generation in polycrystalline media”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 38 (5), 1625 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.417485
[43]D. Castelló-Lurbe, “Breaking fundamental noise limitations to supercontinuum generation”, Opt. Lett. 47 (6), 1299 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.452104
[44]R. R. Alfano, The Supercontinuum Laser Source, Springer, New York (1989)
[45]R. Paschotta, case study on supercontinuum generation in a photonic crystal fiber

(Suggest additional literature!)

(For additional references, see the articles on frequency combs and frequency metrology.)

See also: optical spectrum, coherence, amplified spontaneous emission, photonic crystal fibers, tapered fibers, frequency combs, frequency metrology, spectrograms


Dr. R. Paschotta

This encyclopedia is authored by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, the founder and executive of RP Photonics AG. How about a tailored training course from this distinguished expert at your location? Contact RP Photonics to find out how his technical consulting services (e.g. product designs, problem solving, independent evaluations, training) and software could become very valuable for your business!


Questions and Comments from Users

2021-03-19

How can one calculate the threshold (laser energy or peak power) at which supercontinuum light is generated for a particular material e.g. glass?

The author's answer:

I'm afraid there is no simple formula for that, since depending on the operation regime concerning chromatic dispersion, pulse duration etc. quite different physical mechanisms can be responsible for spectral broadening.

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