Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum Sources: Materials, Waveguides and Applications

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Optics and Lasers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2018) | Viewed by 30165

Special Issue Editors

Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne, CNRS UMR6303, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 25000 Besancon, France
Interests: nonlinear fiber optics; ultrafast optics; optical solitons and breathers; supercontinuum generation
ICB, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire, Carnot de Bourgogne, UMR 6303 CNRS-Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 21078 Dijon, France
Interests: nonlinear glasses and fibers; infrared glasses and fibers; nonlinear properties; IR supercontinuum

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the past decade, there has been a growing interest in mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy instrumentation and suitable mid-IR light sources, which has mainly driven the development of novel materials and the improving quality of traditional mid-IR materials for a vast range of optical components. Emerging supercontinuum (SC) laser sources appears as a promising alternative to typical sources of mid-IR radiations including thermal light source and tunable lasers. Such SC sources deliver mid-IR radiation through nonlinear frequency conversion in guided optics of commonly available near-IR laser sources or more recent mid-IR lasers. This nonlinear generation is mainly based on parametric processes which allows extreme spectral broadening of pump lasers (i.e., supercontinuum generation) occurring with confined propagation in optical waveguides or fibers. High coherence and spectral power density over an ultra-broad spectral range are the main attractive features of these nonlinear optical devices with modes of operation from quasi-continuous wave to high-repetition-rate ultrashort pulsed sources, thus opening new prospects for remote sensing applications. An abundance of molecules has absorption features in this mid-IR "molecular fingerprint" region, in particular most of pollutants and greenhouse gases emitted from human activity with significant influence on air quality, as well as on the carbon cycle and global climate change. The absorption cross-sections of such gases are typically higher, by at least one order of magnitude, in the mid-IR compared to the near-infrared region.

This Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences entitled “Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum Sources: Materials, Waveguides and Applications” aims to cover recent advances in the design and development of mid-infrared broadband continuum sources—from architectures to applications, including theoretical and experimental contributions.

Dr. Bertrand Kibler
Prof. Frederic Smektala
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Infrared glasses and bulk materials

  • Nonlinear glasses and bulk materials

  • Fluorides, tellurites, heavy oxides, chalcogenides materials

  • Specialty nonlinear waveguides and fibers for mid-IR

  • Hybrid materials or fibers

  • Mid-IR laser sources

  • Nonlinear frequency conversion and parametric devices

  • Supercontinuum generation

  • Mid-infrared sensing and gas detection, IR spectroscopic applications

  • Photonic integration

  • Numerical simulations

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 2147 KiB  
Article
New Candidate Multicomponent Chalcogenide Glasses for Supercontinuum Generation
by Claudia Goncalves, Myungkoo Kang, Byoung-Uk Sohn, Gufan Yin, Juejun Hu, Dawn T. H. Tan and Kathleen Richardson
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(11), 2082; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8112082 - 28 Oct 2018
Cited by 38 | Viewed by 3788
Abstract
Broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation requires host material attributes defined by both optical and physical properties and the material’s manufacturability. We review and define the trade-offs in these attributes as applied to fiber or planar film applications based on homogeneous glass property data, and [...] Read more.
Broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation requires host material attributes defined by both optical and physical properties and the material’s manufacturability. We review and define the trade-offs in these attributes as applied to fiber or planar film applications based on homogeneous glass property data, and provide a series of examples of how one might optimize such attributes through material compositional and morphology design. As an example, we highlight the role of varying composition, microstructure, and linear/nonlinear optical properties, such as transmittance, refractive index, and the multiphoton absorption coefficient, for a series of novel multicomponent chalcogenide glasses within a model GeSe2-As2Se3-PbSe (GAP-Se) system. We report key optical property variation as a function of composition and form, and discuss how such glasses, suitable for both fiber and planar film processing, could lend themselves as candidates for use in SC generation. We demonstrate the impact of starting glass composition and morphology and illustrate how tailoring composition and form (bulk versus film) leads to significant variation in linear, nonlinear, and dispersive optical property behavior within this system that enables design options that are attractive to optimization of desirable SC performance, based on optical composites. Full article
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13 pages, 5820 KiB  
Article
Dispersion-Engineered Step-Index Tellurite Fibers for Mid-Infrared Coherent Supercontinuum Generation from 1.5 to 4.5 μm with Sub-Nanojoule Femtosecond Pump Pulses
by Paul Froidevaux, Arnaud Lemière, Bertrand Kibler, Frédéric Désévédavy, Pierre Mathey, Grégory Gadret, Jean-Charles Jules, Kenshiro Nagasaka, Takenobu Suzuki, Yasutake Ohishi and Frédéric Smektala
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(10), 1875; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8101875 - 11 Oct 2018
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 2629
Abstract
Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation from 1.5 to 4.5 µm with sub-nanojoule femtosecond pump pulses is demonstrated by using a short segment of dispersion-engineered step-index tellurite fiber with very low OH content. Distinct group-velocity dispersion regimes in a simple design of step-index tellurite fiber are [...] Read more.
Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation from 1.5 to 4.5 µm with sub-nanojoule femtosecond pump pulses is demonstrated by using a short segment of dispersion-engineered step-index tellurite fiber with very low OH content. Distinct group-velocity dispersion regimes in a simple design of step-index tellurite fiber are also reported, which allows to choose the nonlinear pulse propagation regime according to the required tailoring of the supercontinuum source. Numerical simulations based on the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation are used to determine optimized fiber parameters before experimental demonstrations. We also analyse the coherence properties of the resulting supercontinuum sources. Full article
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11 pages, 15373 KiB  
Article
Octave Spanning Supercontinuum in Titanium Dioxide Waveguides
by Kamal Hammani, Laurent Markey, Manon Lamy, Bertrand Kibler, Juan Arocas, Julien Fatome, Alain Dereux, Jean-Claude Weeber and Christophe Finot
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(4), 543; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8040543 - 02 Apr 2018
Cited by 28 | Viewed by 5316
Abstract
We report on the experimental generation of an octave-spanning supercontinuum in a 2.2 cm-long titanium dioxide optical waveguide with two zero dispersion wavelengths. The resulting on-chip supercontinuum reaches the visible wavelength range as well as the mid-infrared region by using a femtosecond fiber [...] Read more.
We report on the experimental generation of an octave-spanning supercontinuum in a 2.2 cm-long titanium dioxide optical waveguide with two zero dispersion wavelengths. The resulting on-chip supercontinuum reaches the visible wavelength range as well as the mid-infrared region by using a femtosecond fiber laser pump at 1.64 µm. Full article
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Review

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11 pages, 2927 KiB  
Review
Chalcogenide Microstructured Optical Fibers for Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum Generation: Interest, Fabrication, and Applications
by Yiming Wu, Marcello Meneghetti, Johann Troles and Jean-Luc Adam
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(9), 1637; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091637 - 13 Sep 2018
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 3920
Abstract
The mid-infrared spectral region is of great technical and scientific importance in a variety of research fields and applications. Among these studies, mid-infrared supercontinuum generation has attracted strong interest in the last decade, because of unique properties such as broad wavelength coverage and [...] Read more.
The mid-infrared spectral region is of great technical and scientific importance in a variety of research fields and applications. Among these studies, mid-infrared supercontinuum generation has attracted strong interest in the last decade, because of unique properties such as broad wavelength coverage and high coherence, among others. In this paper, the intrinsic optical properties of different types of glasses and fibers are presented. It turns out that microstructured chalcogenide fibers are ideal choices for the generation of mid-infrared supercontinua. The fabrication procedures of chalcogenide microstructured fibers are introduced, including purification methods of the glass, rod synthesis processes, and preform realization techniques. In addition, supercontinua generated in chalcogenide microstructured fibers employing diverse pump sources and configurations are enumerated. Finally, the potential of supercontinua for applications in mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy is shown. Full article
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21 pages, 6402 KiB  
Review
Ultrafast Mid-IR Laser Pulses Generation via Chirp Manipulated Optical Parametric Amplification
by Zuofei Hong, Seyed Ali Rezvani, Qingbin Zhang and Peixiang Lu
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(5), 744; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8050744 - 08 May 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5562
Abstract
Over the past decades, optical parametric amplification (OPA) has become one of the most promising sources of ultrafast Mid-IR laser, owing to its outstanding properties including ultrabroad bandwidth, superior tunability, good beam quality, and scalable energy. In this paper, we review the recent [...] Read more.
Over the past decades, optical parametric amplification (OPA) has become one of the most promising sources of ultrafast Mid-IR laser, owing to its outstanding properties including ultrabroad bandwidth, superior tunability, good beam quality, and scalable energy. In this paper, we review the recent progress in ultrashort laser pulse generation via chirp manipulated OPA, which improves the energy scalability and gain bandwidth by strategically chirping both pump and seed pulses. The gain mechanism is theoretically analyzed and the OPA processes are numerically simulated. In addition, the concept is verified experimentally. Femtosecond pulses with hundreds of mJ are generated in a high energy dual-chirped-OPA (DC-OPA), and ultrabroadband μJ-level spectra supporting sub-2-cycle pulse durations are achieved in BBP-OPA. Furthermore, the obtained pulses show excellent tunability through the NIR to Mid-IR regions, which makes them a suitable seeding source for further amplification as well as powerful tools in various applications such as strong field physics, attosecond science, and ultrafast spectroscopy. Full article
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28 pages, 4234 KiB  
Review
A Review of Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum Generation in Chalcogenide Glass Fibers
by Shixun Dai, Yingying Wang, Xuefeng Peng, Peiqing Zhang, Xunsi Wang and Yinsheng Xu
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(5), 707; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8050707 - 03 May 2018
Cited by 91 | Viewed by 8160
Abstract
Chalcogenide glasses have the advantages of a wide transparency window (over 20 μm) and high optical nonlinearity (up to a thousand times greater than that of silica glasses), making them good candidates for mid-infrared supercontinuum generation. In this review, we describe both the [...] Read more.
Chalcogenide glasses have the advantages of a wide transparency window (over 20 μm) and high optical nonlinearity (up to a thousand times greater than that of silica glasses), making them good candidates for mid-infrared supercontinuum generation. In this review, we describe both the history and recent developments in mid-infrared supercontinuum generation from chalcogenide fibers according to three kinds of fiber structures: step-index, microstructured and tapered fibers. We also review the coherence properties of mid-infrared supercontinuum generation and all-fiber supercontinuum sources based on chalcogenide fibers. Full article
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