Study and Design of Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF) for

Supercontinuum Generation (SC)

1. Introduction
Supercontinuum generation (SC) is the generation of a wide spectrum of frequencies
from a narrow band pump, when the light propogates through a nonlinear medium. As a
result, white light source can be produced that has the brightness of a laser. Spectral
broadening and the generation of new frequency components is an inherent feature of
nonlinear optics. SC generation was pioneered by Alphano and Shapiro in 1970 (Alfano and
Shapiro, 1970a) (Alfano and Shapiro, 1970b). Developments in low-loss optical fiber
technology led to the use of optical fibers as non-linear medium for SC generation. The
advantage of using optical fiber is that the beam is confined in the transverse plane of the
optical fiber, so that intensity of the light can be sustained over large propagation distances.
This reduces the requirement of high laser power for efficient broadband generation.

Later, Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF) were introduced which caused a revolution in
the genera- tion of ultra broadband high brightness optical spectra through the process of
supercontinuum generation. Experiments using photonic crystal fiber in late 90’s attracted
widespread interest and excitement because of the combination of high power, high
coherence and the possibility to generate spectra spanning more than an octave. Moreover,
the design freedom of photonic crystal fiber allowed supercontinuum generation to be
optimized to the wider range of avail- able pump sources, and experiments reported
broadband spectra covering the complete win- dow of transmission of silica based fiber using
input pulses with durations ranging from several nanoseconds to several tens of
femtoseconds, as well as high power continuous wave sources.

Supercontinuum generation in PCF was rapidly applied to a range of fields including

optical coherence tomography, spectroscopy, and optical frequency multiplexing.

2. Objectives

The work performed in this thesis focus on SC generation in the visible spectral region
using non-linear PCF. PCF was chosen as the non-linear broadening element for two
reasons.
1. Light in PCF is confined within a small core region that enables the generation of
high intensities.
2. The wave guiding nature of a fiber allows the use of long fiber lengths.

Since the non-linear mechanisms responsible for spectral broadening are dependent on both
the light intensity and interaction length within the material, an optical fiber enables the
generation of much stronger non-linear effects compared to a free space beam focused
through a sample.

The type of fiber chosen for SC generation depends on many factors.

1. At first the fiber chosen must have low loss in the wavelength region that the
continuum is expected to cover. This enables the use of longer fiber lengths for
obtaining larger non-linear effects.
2. Second, it is preferable to have a fiber with large nonlinear coefficient γ where n2 is
the non-linear refractive index of the fiber glass material and Ae f f is the effective
mode area of the guided light in the core.For a given wavelength and material
system, one can choose a single mode fiber with a small core size for enhanced SC
generation.
3. Finally, the dispersion properties of the fiber also affect the shape and extent of the
generated continuum. By pumping the fiber in the normal dispersion regime, the SC
generation is dominated by self-phase modulation while pumping the fiber in the
anomalous dispersion regime generates an SC dominated by modulation instability
and soliton self-frequency shift.

3. Literature Survey

Philip.J.Russel introduced the concept of Photonic crystal fibre’s (PCF) (Russell,

2003) for the first time. The idea of trapping light inside a hollow core fiber by creating a
periodic wavelength-scale lattice of microscopic holes in the cladding glass lead to the
generation of PCF. Russel proposed a low-loss single-mode fibre, made entirely from pure
silica, consisted of a tubular cladding shell connected to a central core by thin webs of glass.
Different techniques for PCF fabrication is also explained in this work.
 Later, light guiding mechanism in photonic crystal fiber was explained (Knight,
2003). Light is guided inside the core of PCF in different ways based on the refractive index
difference between core and the cladding. When the refractive index of core is greater than
cladding, light is guided through total internal reflection and in the converse case, guided is
through photonic band gap effect. Based on the guiding mechanisms, PCF is classified as
solid-core PCF and hollow-core or Photonic Band Gap (PBG) fiber.

In PBG fiber, the core is created by introducing a defect in the PBG structure, for
example an extra air hole, thereby creating an area where the light can propagate. PCFs
based on PBG have the capability to control the guidance of light within a certain frequency
band. This class of hollow core PCF, however, is not that used in SC generation
experiments. Rather, SC generation is observed in PCFs having a solid core in the center of
the structure, so that the fiber consists of a region of solid glass surrounded by an array of air
holes running along its length.

It was experimentally proved that suitable design of the photonic crystal cladding
could shift the Zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) (Mogilevtsev et al., 1998) of a PCF to
wavelengths shorter than the intrinsic ZDW of silica around 1.3 µm. Also, reducing the
effective area of the PCF will enhance the Kerr nonlinearity (Broderick et al., 1999), which
leads to significant nonlinear properties in PCF. The combination of these two effects was
demonstrated in two independent experiments by Ranka et al.(Ranka et al., 2000)and
Wadsworth et al. (Wadsworth et al., 2000).

Through this study, they exploited the fiber’s near-infrared anomalous group
velocity dispersion (GVD) to study soliton propagation effects around 850 nm. This work
also contains a brief study of SC generation from the ultraviolet to the infrared, even
though spectral broadening was not quantitatively reported then.

Even though PCF-generated SCs were finding wide application, at this stage there
was no quantitative theory of the physics underlying the spectral broadening, rather than the
importance of the PCF’s enhanced non-linearity and modified dispersion pointed out by both
Knight et.al. (Knight et al., 2000) and Ranka et al. (Ranka et al., 2000). It was then
followed by a number of experiments exploring the different conditions under which
similarly broad SC could be generated.
 It was proved through experiments (Birks et al., 2000) that showed that the use of
PCF was not fundamentally necessary, since identical dispersion and non-linear
characteristics could be obtained simply by an appropriate tapering of standard optical
fiber. By injecting 200 fs pulses of nJ energy into a 9 cm taper of around 2 µm diameter,
comparable octave spanning SCs to those seen with PCF were observed. By emphasizing
the central role played by the dispersion and non-linear characteristics, this experiment was
a crucial step in developing an understanding of the SC generation process in PCF.

Several experiments are reported regarding the generation of broadband SC using

non fem- tosecond pulse sources. Using 0.8 ns duration, 300 nJ energy pulses from a Q-
switched mi- crochip laser at 532 nm it was able to generate over 250 THz of SC from 460
to 750 nm in 1.8 m of PCF, through excitation of a higher-order mode whose zero dispersion
wavelength (ZDW) at 580 nm was reached from the pump wavelength by cascaded Raman
scattering (Provino et al., 2001). Parametric gain calculations showed that the SC
development from this point could be well explained in terms of four-wave mixing about the
ZDW.

A similar combination of Raman scattering and four-wave mixing was also observed
in an ex- periment (Coen et al., 2001), where 60 ps duration, 40 nJ energy pulses at 647 nm
generated a 450 THz SC from 400 to 1000 nm in the fundamental mode using 10 m of PCF
with ZDW at 675 nm. This work also reported the first use of a generalized nonlinear
Schrödinger equation (NLSE) including higher-order dispersion and Raman scattering to
model the SC generation process in PCF, and numerical simulations were shown to
quantitatively reproduce the spectral characteristics seen in experi- ments.

Numerical modeling of SC generation in PCF using femtosecond pulses was initially

reported in (Husakou and Herrmann, 2001), and the crucial role of soliton fission in the
spectral broad- ening process was highlighted for the first time. However, numerical
simulations used in this work were based on a set of reduced Maxwell equations in which
the Raman effect was ne- glected, and much of the detailed structure seen in experimentally
measured spectra was not quantitatively reproduced.

At the same time, it was found that the generalized NLSE approach including
higher-order dispersion and stimulated Raman scattering was also capable of accurately
modeling SC gen- eration in the femtosecond regime. (Liu et al., 2001) used an extended
Non Linear Schrodinger Equation (NLSE) limited to cubic dispersion terms, yet obtained
good qualitative agreement between simulations and experiments modeling spectral
generation over 43 THz using tapered PCF pumped around 1.3 µm.

Focusing on the properties of Raman solitons generated during the SC generation

process, (Washburn et al., 2001) used a model incorporating the global PCF dispersion
characteristics, and were able to accurately model experimental results from a Ti: sapphire-
pumped PCF around 806 nm over a 150 THz frequency span from 700 to 1100 nm.

T hese results were followed by a number of more careful comparisons between

experiment and simulation, in both the picosecond and femtosecond regimes. (Genty et al.,
2002) quantitatively studied the femtosecond pump case in the context of the soliton fission
theory of Kodama and Hasegawa (1987).

As a result of these experimental studies and researches, the dominant spectral

broadening mechanisms underlying SC generation in PCF were clearly identified by 2002.
The physics was interpreted as essentially identical to that previously encountered in
standard optical fibers, with soliton fission and the Raman self-frequency shift responsible
for the long-wavelengthcomponents of the SC, and dispersive wave generation responsible
for the short-wavelength components.

Experimental studies by (Dudley and Coen, 2002) and (Gaeta, 2002) showed that the
spectral and temporal structure of the SC could exhibit extreme sensitivity to input pulse
noise. This lead to the fact that, shot-to-shot intensity fluctuations could wash out spectral
fine structure when averaged over many shots, and shot-to-shot phase fluctuations could
degrade spectralcoherence.

3. References

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coupling in glass. Physical Review Letters, 24(11):584.
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