546 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 28, No.

7 / April 1, 2003

Optimization of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal

fibers for pulse compression

Guoqing Chang, Theodore B. Norris, and Herbert G. Winful

Frontiers in Optical Coherent and Ultrafast Science Center and Center for Ultrafast Optical Science,
University of Michigan, 1006 Institute of Science and Technology Building, 2200 Bonisteel Boulevard, Ann Arbor, Michigan
48109-2099

Received August 12, 2002

A theoretical study of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber and its application to pulse compres-
sion is presented. The evolution of the spectrum can be divided into three stages: initial broadening below a
certain threshold propagation distance, dramatic broadening to a supercontinuum at a threshold distance, and,
finally, saturation of the spectral width on propagation. It is found that the group delay and group-delay
dispersion of the supercontinum are sensitive to the input pulse peak power after further propagation at the
third stage. Fluctuations from the input pulse are amplified and translated into f luctuations and time shift
of the compressed pulses. There exists an optimum compressed distance at which compressed pulses with
negligible f luctuation and time shift can be obtained. © 2003 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 190.4370, 060.5530, 190.7110.

With their small core size and zero-dispersion wave-
length shifted to near 800 nm, photonic crystal
fibers1,2 (PCFs) have attracted great interest for su-
percontinuum (SC) generation. A SC extending from
the violet to the infrared has been demonstrated with
a 75-cm PCF.3 Besides applications to optical coher-
ence tomography4 and frequency metrology,5 the SC
from a PCF may make it possible to generate single-
cycle pulses if one compensates for the spectral phase
perfectly. Compression to the subcycle regime is
possible only with a properly designed compressor
when the phase is stable and smooth. However,
recent theoretical simulations6 and experimental
measurements7 have revealed substructures in the
SC that are extremely sensitive to f luctuations of the
input energy. These f indings raise the question of
whether signif icant compression can be practically
achieved. In this Letter we investigate the question
theoretically and f ind that the answer depends on the
length of the fiber.
Propagation of ultrashort pulses along optical f ibers
can be characterized by the nonlinear Schrödinger
equation (NSE) in the frequency domain, written as8,9
≠S共V, z兲
苷 2 i关b共v0 1 V, z兲 2 共b共v0 , z兲 2 Vb1 共v0 , z兲
≠z
2 ia共v0 1 V, z兲兴S共V, z兲
µ ∂
V
2 igP0 1 1 F 关 S共T , z兲 共 jS共T , z兲j2
v0
1 F 21 兵R共V兲F 关 jS共T , z兲j2 兴其兲兲兴 .
Linear effects that are due to dispersion and nonlinear
effects such as self-phase modulation, self-steepening,
and stimulated Raman scattering are all included.
The advantage of considering the NSE in the fre-
quency domain lies in the fact that some of the physical
parameters are dependent on frequency rather than
time. The f iber dispersion is an example that can
0146-9592/03/070546-03$15.00/0
be described exactly by the frequency-domain NSE,
which becomes more important when one deals with a
SC. Another parameter that is strongly dependent on
frequency is the effective core area, Aeff , which appears
in the expression of nonlinear parameter g, def ined
as10 g 苷 vn2 兾cAeff , where n2 苷 2.6 3 10216 cm2 兾W
is the nonlinear refractive-index coefficient of the
fiber. A smaller Aeff , corresponding to the higher-
frequency components, means that nonlinear effects
are stronger for the blue side of the SC than the
red. The frequency-domain NSE can be solved by the
Runge– Kutta– Fehlberg routine.8 A step size small
enough to ensure convergence is taken. Motivated
by the split-step Fourier method9 that is commonly
utilized to solve the NSE in the time domain, we
modified the method and made it suitable for the
frequency-domain NSE. With the split-step Fourier
method, the dispersion effect is calculated in the
frequency domain, and nonlinear effects are calculated
separately in the time domain. The difference be-
tween the split-step Fourier method and the modified
method lies in the fact that, for the modif ied method,
nonlinear effects are also calculated in the frequency
domain by Runge –Kutta –Fehlberg routine. Losses
in the PCF can be neglected since the f iber length is
only tens of centimeters. The time resolution is cho-
sen as 0.5 fs, and the sample number is 216 苷 65536,
which leads to a frequency resolution of 30.52 MHz.
In the simulation, we obtained the dispersion
function by fitting the experimental dispersion11 of a
free-strand PCF,12 which had a core size of 2.5 mm,
with a 20th-order polynomial. The fiber dispersion
and the effective core area estimated according to
Ref. 13 versus wavelength are shown in Fig. 1(a).
The zero-dispersion point of the fiber is at 775 nm.
Transform-limited hyperbolic secant2 pulses with a
duration of 100 fs FWHM and a central wavelength
of 790 nm are launched into the PCF. Figure 1(b)
shows the SC generated after propagation of 5 and
45 cm. The evolution of the 30-dB spectrum width
© 2003 Optical Society of America
 April 1, 2003 / Vol. 28, No. 7 / OPTICS LETTERS
Fig. 1. (a) Fiber dispersion and effective core area versus
wavelength, (b) SC generated after propagation for 5 cm
(top spectrum) and 45 cm (bottom spectrum).
Fig. 2. (a) Evolution of the 30-dB spectrum width along
the propagation distance. (b) Threshold distance and sat-
uration distance versus the peak power of the input pulse.
with distance is given in Fig. 2(a). It is evident that
there are three stages of SC generation. Consider the
case in which the input peak power is 8 kW. In the
first stage of propagation below the threshold distance
of 2.2 cm, the pulse is compressed because of the
combined effects of self-phase modulation and anoma-
lous dispersion, which also broadens the spectrum.
The effect of higher-order dispersion is to introduce
spectral asymmetry. At the threshold distance, the
peak power of the pulse has increased by several times
over the initial value, thereby increasing nonlinear
effects. In addition, the frequency components of
the broadened spectrum at the first stage that fall
into the normal-dispersion region experience strong
four-wave mixing, which expands the spectrum more
to the blue side than to the red side.14 These two
effects drastically extend the spectrum to a SC in a
short distance. It can also be seen from Fig. 2(a) that,
for a constant pulse duration, the threshold distance
becomes shorter and the spectrum becomes wider
when the peak power of the input pulse is increased.
In the third stage of propagation the dispersion of the
very broad spectrum causes the pulse to break up,
which lowers the peak power and weakens nonlinear
effects. Thus the spectral width saturates after a
certain propagation distance (4.5 cm for 8-kW peak
power). Figure 2(b) illustrates the change of the
threshold and saturation distance for different values
of initial peak power.
One might think that after saturation further prop-
agation would not change the SC substantially because
the nonlinear effects are much weaker. Unfortunately
this is not true. In the third stage, the SC gener-
ates complicated substructures that have been verified
theoretically6 and experimentally.6 For the case de-
scribed above, the number of substructures increases
proportionally with the propagation of the pulse when
547
the distance is below 20 cm. After that, the number
increases slowly and begins to saturate as a result of
the dominance of dispersion.
One can clearly see from Fig. 1(b) that the SC from
a longer propagation distance has more complicated
substructures. To determine the compressibility of
the SC, we investigated its group delay (GD) and
group-delay dispersion (GDD). Figures 3(a) and 3(b)
shows the GD and GDD for the SC after propagation
of 45 cm for 8-kW initial peak power. As with the
SC spectrum, the GD and GDD display complicated
substructures that are also highly sensitive to f luctua-
tions of the initial peak power. At an increased peak
power of 8.016 kW (an increase of 0.2%) with other
conditions unchanged, the corresponding GD and GDD
shown in Figs. 3(c) and 3(d) exhibit totally different
fine substructures. Now consider an ideal compressor
designed for the case in which the input peak power
is exactly 8 kW. Such a compressor can compensate
for the SC phase perfectly, i.e., fc 共v兲 苷 2fSCI 共v兲,
where fc 共v兲 and fSCI 共v兲 are the phases of the ideal
compressor and the SC, respectively. Since the
f luctuations of a mode-locked solid-state laser can
be 0.2%, pulses with slightly different peak power
generate supercontinua with different substructures
in the GD and GDD. Thus, with the compressor
described above, the SC phase for cases in which
the initial peak power differs from 8 kW cannot be
exactly compensated for, which severely degrades the
compressed pulse. A comparison of the compressed
pulses between the ideal case (8 kW, perfect phase
compensation) and a nonideal case, where the peak
power is 8.016 kW, is shown in Fig. 4(a). The com-
parison indicates the peak power of the compressed
pulse for the nonideal case is only one half that for the
ideal case. This result shows that the small f luctua-
tions of the input pulses are amplified and translated
into the f luctuations of the compressed pulses. There
is a time shift of ⬃0.45 fs between two compressed
Fig. 3. GD and GDD for 45-cm propagation distance with
different input peak power: (a), (b) 8 kW and (c), (d) peak
power of 8.016 kW.
548 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 28, No. 7 / April 1, 2003
Fig. 4. (a) Calculated pulse compression for the ideal case
(8 kW) and the nonideal case (8.016 kW). (b) Correspond-
ing time shift and f luctuation versus propagation distance.
(The time shift and f luctuation of the peak power have been
normalized to the duration and the peak power of the com-
pressed pulse with ideal compensation.) (c) Duration of
compressed pulses versus distance for an ideal compressor
and a LCSLM with 8-kW input. (d) Compressed single-
cycle pulses obtained from SC with 80-kW peak power for
the input pulse that propagates 1.2 cm along PCF. The
duration is 2.4 fs for the ideal compressor and 2.54 fs for
the LCSLM.
pulses that is ⬃9% of the compressed pulse duration.
Considering that the input is a train of pulses with
peak power f luctuations, we note that the time shift
will become timing jitter. The power f luctuations
and timing jitter will limit the compressed pulses in
many practical applications. Figure 4(b) indicates
the calculated trend of the power f luctuation and time
shift versus propagation distance. It is shown that
the f luctuation can be kept neglible for propagation
distances below 20 cm. It should be noted that the
physical origin of the timing jitter is essentially the
same as that for Gordon –Haus jitter; however,
the sources of noise for the two types of jitter are
different. For Gordon –Haus jitter; the noise comes
from amplif ied spontaneous emission, whereas the
jitter of the compressed pulses arises from random
f luctuations of the input laser pulse energy.
We now calculate how we might employ an ideal
broadband liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (LC-
SLM) to compensate for the phase of the SC. The LC-
SLM has 256 strips and, following the same model as
in Ref. 15, we divide the spectrum from 0.55 to 1.1 mm
into 256 channels. The phase of each channel is as-
signed so that it cancels exactly the mean phase within
the spectral range of this channel. The resulting du-
rations of the compressed pulses for different fiber
lengths with the LCSLM are shown in Fig. 4(c). For
comparison, the results with an ideal compressor are
also shown in the figure. It is obvious that there ex-
ists an optimum compression distance that depends on
the input peak power as well as the duration of the
input pulse. When the input pulse has a duration of
100 fs with 8-kW peak power, the optimum distance
is 5 cm, and the duration of the compressed pulse is
5.15 fs, with very small amplitude f luctuations and
time shift of 0.12 fs. If the peak power is increased to
80 kW, the spectral width of the SC can reach ⬃2 oc-
taves after a propagation distance of 1.2 cm. Compen-
sating for the phase with an ideal LCSLM, we obtain
a single-cycle pulse of 2.54 fs, as shown in Fig. 4(d).
In summary, nonlinear effects in SC generation
translate the f luctuations of the initial peak power
into strongly f luctuating substructures in the spec-
trum, group delay, and group-delay dispersion of the
supercontinuum. If a compressor is designed for a
given peak power, the different substructures trans-
late into amplitude f luctuations and timing jitter of
the compressed pulse. To obtain a stable compressed
pulse train one should set the length of the PCF at the
optimum propagation distance.
We acknowledge useful conversations with Philip
St. J. Russell. This work was supported by the
Frontiers in Optical Coherent and Ultrafast Sci-
ence Center through National Science Foundation
grant PHY 0114336. G. Chang’s e-mail address is
guoqingc@umich.edu.
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