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A New Model for CW Supercontinuum Generation

J. C. Travers, S. V. Popov and J. R. Taylor
Femtosecond Optics Group, Physics Department, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
john.travers@imperial.ac.uk

Abstract: We have developed a new pump source model for CW supercontinuum

generation which shows closer agreement to experiment, and rests on a stronger physical
basis, than previous models.
OCIS codes: (060.4370) Nonlinear optics, fibers; (060.5530) Pulse propagation and temporal solitons.

Continuous wave supercontinuum generation in either PCF [1], or highly nonlinear fibre [2,3], can lead to
high average power, broadband sources which have a large variety of applications. An understanding of
the nonlinear dynamics involved in the spectral broadening is interesting for its own sake, but also to
optimize the continuum generation process. Although experimental results have shown great progress with
spectral powers of over 10s mW/nm, and spectral variation less than ±2 dBm [1,4], further enhancement of
the spectral width, particularly to wavelengths shorter than 1 μm would be desirable. However the
modelling of the continuous wave supercontinuum generation, by which such optimisation could be
achieved, has proved difficult due to the complexities of the pump sources and large simulation time-
frames involved, although this problem has recently received significant attention [5-7]. In this paper we
describe a new model for CW pump sources which leads to much better agreement with experiment than
previous models and thus greater insight into the continuum generation process.
The experimental results we chose to model are similar to those reported in [1,4]. A CW
ytterbium fibre laser which produced up to 10 W of average power at a wavelength of 1.065 μm with a 0.5
nm line width, was used to pump a PCF with two zero dispersion wavelengths at 0.86 and 1.57 μm. The
nonlinear coefficient of the fiber was 45 (W.km)-1 at the pump wavelength and the dispersion was 43
ps/(nm.km). The spectral extent was limited at 1.38 μm by the water-loss peak of the fiber. The resulting
supercontinuum spectrum is one curve shown in Fig. 2.
We simulated the optical field propagation by solving the generalised nonlinear Schrödinger
equation using code which accounts for the dispersion up to arbitrary orders, the dispersion of the
nonlinearity, the Raman effect and the spectrally dependent loss profile of the fibre, including the water
loss. The difficulty involved with modelling CW continuum arises from the initial conditions defined by
the pump source model used. In this work we compared four models, three of which have been used
previously; the fourth was developed by us. The temporal and spectral features of these models are
compared in Figs. 1(a) and 1(b) respectively. The first model, which we call PCW, was the pure CW beam
in the time domain with additional shot noise [6]. This corresponds to a single-frequency laser which are
never used in practice due to Brillouin scattering. The resulting narrow spectrum is shown in Fig. 1(b). The
second, which we call the V model after Vanholsbeeck et. al. [5], who previously used it, takes the average
spectral power and adds a random spectral phase to each component, this gives rise to fluctuations in the
time-domain intensity as seen in Fig. 1(a). However, these intensity fluctuations show a strong unphysical
dependence on the numerical grid size chosen, furthermore, this model completely ignores any phase
relationship between the laser modes. Although many results have used this model [5], the dependence on
grid size prevents self-consistent results from being obtained and therefore we do not consider it further.
The third model, which we call the F model after Frosz et. al. who developed it [7], represent the CW
beam as constant time domain-intensity, with correctly correlated phase to obtain a Lorentzian spectrum.
However, this shape does not correspond to real fibre lasers which exhibit a stronger, exponential drop in
power in the spectrum wings.
In this work we have developed a new model which is based on simulating the actual laser cavity
used as the pump, thus obtaining a realistic approximation to the phase relationship between spectral
components. We propagate the field around a cavity consisting of a length of gain fibre with nonlinearity
and dispersion, followed by the spectral response of the high-reflecting Bragg grating, back through the
gain fibre and then through the output Bragg grating of our fibre laser. We seed the system with quantum
noise and iterate, adjusting the gain of the fibre based on the estimated saturation energy of the gain under
the laser pumping conditions. We take the field after the output grating as our continuum pump field after
it has converged in average power and RMS temporal and spectral width to a relative tolerance better than
10-5 and 10-3 respectively. The resulting field exhibits both temporal and spectral fluctuations in phase and

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intensity (Fig. 1). However the intensity fluctuations in the time-domain are smoother and longer and less
intense, than those of the V model and, importantly, the intensity fluctuation statistics do not depend on
grid size, unlike the V model.
g
(a) (b)

Figure 1: (a) The intensity of the different CW models for a single shot; (b) The corresponding spectra.

The results of propagating these CW source models through the fibre used in our experiments are
shown in Fig. 2. All simulation results reported represent an average over 30 ensembles. From Fig. 2 we
see that the PCW model significantly under estimates the continuum broadening. This can be understood
from the lack of power in the spectrum wings to seed modulational instability (MI) responsible for the
initiation of the continuum process. More significantly, there are no time-domain intensity fluctuations,
upon which MI gain is exponentially-dependent, and so soliton formation from MI is artificially
inefficient. The F model suffers from the same problem due to lack of intensity fluctuations. In addition
the spectral power in the wings is too high (due to the Lorentzian line shape), so Raman Stokes line
formation dominates over initiation of a soliton continuum through MI. In contrast, the supercontinuum
spectrum obtained from our laser model agrees much better with the experimental result than the other
models. Here we should note that the model does not have any free parameters - all values being
determined by directly known or measurable quantities.

Figure 2: The simulated and experimental spectra at the output of the fiber.

In conclusion we have described and validated a new model of CW pump sources for supercontinuum
simulations, based on measurable physical quantities. We obtain significantly better agreement with
experiment than previously used models and avoid unphysical dependence on numerical parameters.
References
[1] A.V. Avdokhin, S.V. Popov and J.R. Taylor, "Continuous-wave, high-power, Raman continuum generation in holey fibers," Opt.
Lett., 28, 1353-1355 (2003)
[2] S.V. Popov, A.B. Rulkov and J.R. Taylor, Paper TuA6 Advanced Solid State Photonics, Santa Fe, NM, (2004).
[3] M. González-Herráez, S. Martin-López, P. Corredera, M. Hernanz and P. Horche, “Supercontinuum generation using a
continuous-wave Raman fiber laser,” Opt. Com., 226, 323-328 (2003)
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