Low-threshold supercontinuum generation in polycrystalline media

Sergey Vasilyev, Jiahui Gu, Mike Mirov, Yury Barnakov, Igor Moskalev, Viktor Smolski, Jeremy Peppers, Miroslav Kolesik, Sergey Mirov, Valentin Gapontsev

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Until recently, the generation of super-octave continua in bulk materials at full repetition rates of femtosecond (fs) oscillators has been limited to a few special cases of Kerr lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire lasers. In 2019, we described a 3.4-octave fs source with 50 nJ pulse energy at the repetition rate of 78 MHz based on polycrystalline Cr:ZnS [Vasilyev et al., Optica6, 126 (2019)]. Here we explain the mechanism of fs supercontinuum generation in transition-metal doped polycrystalline II-VI semiconductors at relatively low (nJ-level) pulse energy. We demonstrate that this new supercontinuum regime is enabled by a complex, yet well-reproducible, interplay between the effects arising from the third-order nonlinearity, the quadratic nonlinearities, and thermal optical effects in the medium. We also demonstrate the control of fs pulse propagation in disordered χ(2) media via the control of the material microstructure.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1625-1633
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of the Optical Society of America B: Optical Physics
Volume38
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1 2021

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

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