Coherent octave-spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum generated in As2S3-silica double-nanospike waveguide pumped by femtosecond Cr:ZnS laser

Shangran Xie; Nikolai Tolstik; John C Travers; Evgeni Sorokin; Celine Caillaud; Johann Troles; Philip St J Russell; Irina T Sorokina

doi:10.1364/OE.24.012406

Coherent octave-spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum generated in As₂S₃-silica double-nanospike waveguide pumped by femtosecond Cr:ZnS laser

Opt Express. 2016 May 30;24(11):12406-13. doi: 10.1364/OE.24.012406.

Authors

Shangran Xie, Nikolai Tolstik, John C Travers, Evgeni Sorokin, Celine Caillaud, Johann Troles, Philip St J Russell, Irina T Sorokina

PMID: 27410155
DOI: 10.1364/OE.24.012406

Abstract

A more than 1.5 octave-spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum (1.2 to 3.6 μm) is generated by pumping a As₂S₃-silica "double-nanospike" waveguide via a femtosecond Cr:ZnS laser at 2.35 μm. The combination of the optimized group velocity dispersion and extremely high nonlinearity provided by the As₂S₃-silica hybrid waveguide enables a ~100 pJ level pump pulse energy threshold for octave-spanning spectral broadening at a repetition rate of 90 MHz. Numerical simulations show that the generated supercontinuum is highly coherent over the entire spanning wavelength range. The results are important for realization of a high repetition rate octave-spanning frequency comb in the mid-infrared spectral region.