Chalcogenide-glass polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber for mid-infrared supercontinuum generation

• Published in: JPhys photonics Vol. 1; no. 4; pp. 44003 - 44013
• Main Authors: Ghosh, A N, Meneghetti, M, Petersen, C R, Bang, O, Brilland, L, Venck, S, Troles, J, Dudley, J M, Sylvestre, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.10.2019
• Subjects: Birefringence; chalcogenide glass; Chalcogenides; Crystal fibers; fiber optics; Mathematical models; mid-infrared (MIR) photonics; nonlinear optics; photonic crystal fibers; Photonic crystals; Polarization; Schrodinger equation; supercontinuum (SC) generation
• ISSN: 2515-7647; 2515-7647
• DOI: 10.1088/2515-7647/ab3b1e

In this paper, we report the design and fabrication of a highly birefringent polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber made from chalcogenide glass, and its application to linearly-polarized supercontinuum generation in the mid-infrared region. The fiber was drawn using the casting method from As38Se62 glass which features a transmission window from 2 to 10 m and a high nonlinear index of 1.13 × 10-17 m2 W−1. It has a zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) at 4.56 m for the fast axis and 4.68 m for the slow axis and, at average ZDW, a large birefringence of 6.5 × 10-4 and consequently strong polarization maintaining properties are expected. Using this fiber, we experimentally demonstrate supercontinuum generation spanning from 3.1 to 6.02 m and 3.33-5.78 m using femtosecond pumping at 4 m and 4.53 m, respectively. We further investigate the supercontinuum bandwidth versus the input pump polarization angle and we show very good agreement with numerical simulations of the two-polarization model based on two coupled generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equations.