235 research outputs found
Polarization-Tailored Raman Frequency Conversion in Chiral Gas-Filled Hollow Core Photonic Crystal Fibers
Broadband-tunable sources of circularly-polarized light are crucial in fields
such as laser science, biomedicine and spectroscopy. Conventional sources rely
on nonlinear wavelength conversion and polarization control using standard
optical components, and are limited by the availability of suitably transparent
crystals and glasses. Although gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber
provides pressure-tunable dispersion, long well-controlled optical
path-lengths, and high Raman conversion efficiency, it is unable to preserve
circular polarization state, typically exhibiting weak linear birefringence.
Here we report a revolutionary approach based on helically-twisted hollow-core
photonic crystal fiber, which displays circular birefringence, thus robustly
maintaining circular polarization state against external perturbations. This
makes it possible to generate pure circularly-polarized Stokes and anti-Stokes
signals by rotational Raman scattering in hydrogen. The polarization state of
the frequency-shifted Raman bands can be continuously varied by tuning the gas
pressure in the vicinity of the gain suppression point. The results pave the
way to a new generation of compact and efficient fiber-based sources of
broadband light with fully-controllable polarization state.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Continuously wavelength-tunable high harmonic generation via soliton dynamics
We report generation of high harmonics in a gas-jet pumped by pulses
self-compressed in a He-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber through the
soliton effect. The gas-jet is placed directly at the fiber output. As the
energy increases the ionization-induced soliton blue-shift is transferred to
the high harmonics, leading to a emission bands that are continuously tunable
from 17 to 45 eV
Nonlinear fiber-optic strain sensor based on four-wave mixing in microstructured optical fiber
We demonstrate a nonlinear fiber-optic strain sensor, which uses the shifts of four-wave mixing Stokes and anti-Stokes peaks caused by the strain-induced changes in the structure and refractive index of a microstructured optical fiber. The sensor thus uses the inherent nonlinearity of the fiber and does not require any advanced post-processing of the fiber. Strain sensitivity of -0.23 pm/mu epsilon is achieved experimentally and numerical simulations reveal that for the present fiber the sensitivity can be increased to -4.46 pm/mu epsilon by optimizing the pump wavelength and power. (C) 2012 Optical Society of Americ
Supercontinuum generation in the vacuum ultraviolet through dispersive-wave and soliton-plasma interaction in noble-gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber
We report on the generation of a three-octave-wide supercontinuum extending
from the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) to the near-infrared, spanning at least 113
to 1000 nm (i.e., 11 to 1.2 eV), in He-filled hollow-core kagome-style photonic
crystal fiber. Numerical simulations confirm that the main mechanism is a novel
and previously undiscovered interaction between dispersive-wave emission and
plasma-induced blueshifted soliton recompression around the fiber zero
dispersion frequency. The VUV part of the supercontinuum, which modeling shows
to be coherent and possess a simple phase structure, has sufficient bandwidth
to support single-cycle pulses of 500 attosecond duration. We also demonstrate,
in the same system, the generation of narrower-band VUV pulses, through
dispersive-wave emission, tunable from 120 to 200 nm with efficiencies
exceeding 1% and VUV pulse energies in excess of 50 nJ.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Low-noise supercontinuum generation in chiral all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fibers
We present the advantages of supercontinuum generation in chiral, therefore
circularly birefringent, all-normal dispersion fibers. Due to the absence of
nonlinear power transfer between the polarization eigenstates of the fiber,
chiral all-normal dispersion fibers do not exhibit any polarization
instabilities and thus are an ideal platform for low-noise supercontinuum
generation. By pumping a chiral all-normal dispersion fiber at 802 nm, we
obtained an octave-spanning, robustly circularly polarized supercontinuum with
low-noise.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
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