Low energy, enhanced supercontinuum generation in high nonlinearity dispersion-shifted fibers

Summary form only given. We generate >420 nm of supercontinuum (SC) by propagating pulses with energies <100 pJ through less than 2 m of dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) in which the nonlinearity is enhanced by a factor of 4.5X over conventional DSF. By using high nonlinearity (Hi-NL) fiber, we reduce required pulse energies by 56% while simultaneously increasing the bandwidth by 86 nm compared with SC generated in conventional DSF of the same length and dispersion. We study the SC evolution as a function of pulse energy, fiber length and nonlinearity to find optimal conditions for maximum broadening without spectral distortion. Fiber-based SC has been demonstrated as a promising candidate for TDM/WDM sources and is generated typically in several kilometers of dispersion-tailored fiber. By generating the SC in a fiber shorter by three orders of magnitude, we obtain very stable pulses from the continuum and are able to accurately model the SC generation process. The short fiber length, however, requires high average power sources at OC-192 repetition rates. We reduce the average power required from a 10 Gb/s or OC-192 source to <550 mW by using 2 m of Hi-NL fiber.