Supercontinuum Generation With GHz Repetition Rate Femtosecond-Pulse Fiber-Amplified VECSELs

We report on supercontinuum generation using a mode-locked VECSEL emitting 400-fs pulses at a 3-GHz repetition rate, amplified with a cascaded ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier system up to 40 W of average power. The pulses are then recompressed to their original duration via a high throughput transmission grating compressor, and used to generate supercontinuum in two samples of photonic crystal fiber (PCF): an all-normal dispersion PCF, and a PCF with a zero dispersion wavelength of 1040 nm, creating 20 dB spectral bandwidths of 200 nm and 280 nm, respectively.