Low-Noise Supercontinuum in a Normal Dispersion ZBLAN Fibre Employing a Pump with Cascaded Compression

Supercontinuum (SC) generated in an all-normal dispersion polarisation-maintaining (PM) fibre with a femtosecond (fs) pump can have a smooth spectral intensity while preserving a single pulse in the time domain. In addition, these SCs can exhibit ultra-low pulse-to-pulse fluctuation [1] that enables a number of applications. In the near-infrared, such low-noise sources based on silica fibres have been used in demonstrations of shot-noise-limited SC-based ultra-high-resolution optical coherence tomography [2].