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During the last few decades, solid-core photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have been extensively explored to generate broadband, high-coherence supercontinua (SC). Limited by the material absorption and relatively low nonlinearity of fused silica, spectral broadening in silica PCF-based SCs is usually restricted to the blue to near-infrared spectral regions, even in developed commercial sources. The output spectra of these sources are missing short wavelengths of the full range. Many efforts have been spent to break the limitation. Among them, dispersive-wave (DW) generation has been investigated for triggering new frequencies in short wavelengths. With satisfied phase-matching conditions, excessive energy can be directly transferred from solitons of the anomalous dispersion region to DWs of the short wavelengths. However, a systematical study of factors, including phase-matched DWs, strongly related to the dispersion tailoring of higher-order modes (HOMs), has rarely been shown. This study reports the experimental observations of HOM-enhanced phase-matchings for the DW generation in the deep-blue and ultraviolet regions. A solid-core PCF-based, UV-extended SC source spanning a 2.8-octave-wide (350 nm to 2500 nm) is demonstrated. Meanwhile, we carefully verify our findings via numerical calculations.

The risk assessment and source identification for potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soils, particularly agricultural soils from megacities, are significant for environmental protection and pollution control. In this study, an intensive sampling (4127 topsoil samples and 994 subsoil samples) was conducted in the Shunyi District, Beijing, which is a suburban area with extensive cropland cover and has been impacted by the megacity over several decades. Concentrations and distributions of 8 PTEs, including V, Cr, Ni, As, Cd, Zn, Pb and Hg, were determined, and their possible sources were quantitatively assessed by principal component analysis (PCA), redundancy analysis (RDA), positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis, and anthropogenic contribution ratio method. Among 8 PTEs, Zn, V and Cr exhibited significantly high concentrations in soils, with means of 68.29, 68.19 and 52.13 mg/kg, respectively, followed by Pb (23.84 mg/kg), Ni (22.91 mg/kg), As (8.30 mg/kg), Cd (0.15 mg/kg) and Hg (0.05 mg/kg). RDA and PCA demonstrated that the rock weathering was a significant source of V, Cr, Ni and As, and the local emissions and atmospheric deposition respectively contributed most of Cd, Zn and Pb, and of Hg in soils. This source category was confirmed the spatial variations of anthropogenic contribution ratios to individual PTEs. PMF results showed that the local emissions contributed 96.3% of Cd, 44.4% of Zn and 32.0% of Pb in soils, and the atmospheric source carrying urban pollutants amounted to 78.7–80.2% of Hg. In this case, several effective analysis methods have been successfully applied to quantify the impact of a megacity to PTEs in suburban soils. These results improve understanding of the contamination status of PTEs in suburban soils from Beijing megacity, and provide basis for policymaker regarding environmental protection and pollution control.