Fiber supercontinuum sources (Invited)

We review supercontinuum generation in optical fibers for particular cases where the nonlinear spectral broadening is induced by pump radiation from fiber-format sources. Based on numerical simulations, our paper is intended to provide experimental design guidelines tailored ytterbium and erbium-based pumps around 1060 and $1550\mathrm{nm}$, respectively. In particular, at $1060\mathrm{nm}$, we consider conditions under which the generated spectra are phase and intensity stable, and we address the dependence of the supercontinuum coherence on the input pulse parameters and the fiber length. At $1550\mathrm{nm}$, special attention is paid to the case of dispersion-flattened dispersion-decreasing fiber, where we revisit the underlying physics in detail and explicitly examine the use of such fiber for supercontinuum generation with pumps of peak power in the range $200–1200\mathrm{W}$ and sub-10m fiber lengths. We show that supercontinuum generation under such conditions can be highly coherent and can be applied to nonlinear pulse compression.