Highly nonlinear non-silica glass microstructured optical fibers with near-zero dispersion and dispersion slope for 1.55 micron applications

Abstract

Microstructured optical fiber (MOF) technology has generated several new opportunities for the implementation of optical fibers with novel properties and functions [1]. The novel optical properties of MOFs arise from the combination of wavelength-scale features in the fiber cross-section with the large index-contrast of the materials comprising the microstructured cladding. Due to the higher linear (n) and nonlinear refractive index (n2 > 2) of non-silica glasses as compared to silica, it has been demonstrated that the effective nonlinearity (gamma) of a non-silica glass MOF can be between 2-4 orders of magnitudes higher than that of the conventional silica fiber (gamma ~ 1 /W /km), thus enabling the realisation of compact nonlinear devices operating at practical power levels. However, for such applications as wavelength-conversion, optical parametric amplification, supercontinuum generation etc, apart from a high gamma value, it is equally desirable that the nonlinear fiber also exhibits near-zero dispersion and dispersion slope at the operating wavelengths. We report here our recent advances on the fabrication of single-mode highly nonlinear lead-silicate MOFs with low dispersion and dispersion slope values at 1.55 micron.

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Identifiers

ORCID for F. Poletti: orcid.org/0000-0002-1000-3083

ORCID for P. Petropoulos: orcid.org/0000-0002-1576-8034

ORCID for D.J. Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058

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