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Designing silicon-core fiber tapers for efficient mid-IR supercontinuum generation

Designing silicon-core fiber tapers for efficient mid-IR supercontinuum generation
Designing silicon-core fiber tapers for efficient mid-IR supercontinuum generation
We propose a taper design for a silicon-core fiber for the purpose of generating a supercontinuum (SC) from a 2.1μm pulsed fiber laser. The design is tailored to maximise the conversion efficiency (CE) to the 3-4μm region, which is important for environmental sensing as it includes several key greenhouse gas absorption lines. There is a need for compact, low-power and efficient solutions. Aluminium nitride photonic-chip waveguides have been shown to generate 0.3mW in the 3-4μm region with an 80mW input. Although this is sufficient power for some applications, the system only offers a 0.4% CE. More recently a silicon nitride planar waveguide was used to transfer energy from a commercial 2.1μm femtosecond laser to targeted wavelengths in the 3-4μm region through dispersive wave generation. To cover the entire region, it is estimated that an input of 40mW would be needed to generate ~1mW (CE of 2.5%). Compared to these materials silicon has a higher nonlinearity and, despite multi-photon absorption, is highly efficient at transferring energy to different wavelengths with modest input powers. Moreover, silicon-core fibers can be tapered using established post-processing procedures, which can be used to control the phase-matching conditions to concentrate energy in a required wavelength range. We have designed a silicon-core fiber taper that can take the input from a 2.1μm fiber laser and efficiently transfer the energy to cover the entire 3-4μm range. We simulated SC generation using the generalised nonlinear Schrödinger equation including wavelength-dependent loss terms (linear, TPA and 3PA). From these simulations we estimate that ~0.8mW average power can be generated covering the entire 3-4μm region, with only 15mW input power, a CE of 5%.
SPIE
Campling, Joseph
daeaf1d9-ff3c-4efd-a618-3a248b79e7f5
Peacock, Anna
685d924c-ef6b-401b-a0bd-acf1f8e758fc
Horak, Peter
520489b5-ccc7-4d29-bb30-c1e36436ea03
Campling, Joseph
daeaf1d9-ff3c-4efd-a618-3a248b79e7f5
Peacock, Anna
685d924c-ef6b-401b-a0bd-acf1f8e758fc
Horak, Peter
520489b5-ccc7-4d29-bb30-c1e36436ea03

Campling, Joseph, Peacock, Anna and Horak, Peter (2020) Designing silicon-core fiber tapers for efficient mid-IR supercontinuum generation. In Nonliner Optics and it's Applications 2020. vol. 11358, SPIE.. (doi:10.1117/12.2555810).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

We propose a taper design for a silicon-core fiber for the purpose of generating a supercontinuum (SC) from a 2.1μm pulsed fiber laser. The design is tailored to maximise the conversion efficiency (CE) to the 3-4μm region, which is important for environmental sensing as it includes several key greenhouse gas absorption lines. There is a need for compact, low-power and efficient solutions. Aluminium nitride photonic-chip waveguides have been shown to generate 0.3mW in the 3-4μm region with an 80mW input. Although this is sufficient power for some applications, the system only offers a 0.4% CE. More recently a silicon nitride planar waveguide was used to transfer energy from a commercial 2.1μm femtosecond laser to targeted wavelengths in the 3-4μm region through dispersive wave generation. To cover the entire region, it is estimated that an input of 40mW would be needed to generate ~1mW (CE of 2.5%). Compared to these materials silicon has a higher nonlinearity and, despite multi-photon absorption, is highly efficient at transferring energy to different wavelengths with modest input powers. Moreover, silicon-core fibers can be tapered using established post-processing procedures, which can be used to control the phase-matching conditions to concentrate energy in a required wavelength range. We have designed a silicon-core fiber taper that can take the input from a 2.1μm fiber laser and efficiently transfer the energy to cover the entire 3-4μm range. We simulated SC generation using the generalised nonlinear Schrödinger equation including wavelength-dependent loss terms (linear, TPA and 3PA). From these simulations we estimate that ~0.8mW average power can be generated covering the entire 3-4μm region, with only 15mW input power, a CE of 5%.

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2003 SPIE-Photonics-EU_si-fibre-taper_for_midIR_JCampling - Accepted Manuscript
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Published date: 6 April 2020
Venue - Dates: SPIE Photonics Europe 2020, , Strasbourg, France, 2020-03-29 - 2020-04-02

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 439348
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/439348
PURE UUID: 4de71ea9-748a-4606-b84c-80132730b6df
ORCID for Anna Peacock: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1940-7172
ORCID for Peter Horak: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8710-8764

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Date deposited: 17 Apr 2020 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:56

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Contributors

Author: Joseph Campling
Author: Anna Peacock ORCID iD
Author: Peter Horak ORCID iD

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