Spectral evolution of femtosecond pulses in nonlinear waveguides: measuring continuum generation and group velocity with NSOM

Abstract

We describe spectral measurements using NSOM of the nonlinear propagation of femtosecond pulses in waveguides. Nonlinearity produces self phase modulation, which broadens the spectrum of the propagating light as it travels along the guide. This process is the basis for supercontinuum sources that span octaves in frequency, which are important for metrology[1] and carrier-envelope phase measurement[2]. Our experiments uniquely measure the spectral evolution of this continuum as the light propagates along the waveguide by sampling the evanescent field with an uncoated NSOM tip, allowing measurement of the spectrum as it develops over long (mm) length scales, and also allowing the study of the submicron evolution of the spectra both along and across the guide. The evolution in one example is shown in figure 1(a). We will compare the measured continuum generation with our nonlinear propagation modeling, and discuss how the observed spectra differ from predictions of simple models.

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Identifiers

ORCID for W.S. Brocklesby: orcid.org/0000-0002-2123-6712

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