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We report about a new type of nonlinear photonic crystal fibers allowing broadband four-wave mixing and supercontinuum generation. The microstructured optical fiber has a structured core consisting of a rod of highly nonlinear glass material inserted in a silica tube. This particular structure enables four wave mixing processes with very large frequency detuning (>135 THz), which permitted the generation of a wide supercontinuum spectrum extending over 1650 nm after 2.15 m of propagation length. The comparison with results obtained from germanium-doped holey fibers confirms the important role of the rod material properties regarding nonlinear process and dispersion.

We present experimental results on the suppression of a complete Raman cascade in a holey fiber by using gain competition with parametric processes. The modulation instabilities which strongly affect the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) gain are induced by two pump wavelengths (532 nm, 1064 nm) placed far and quasi symmetrically on each side of the zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of the fiber (790 nm). The competition between these two nonlinear effects takes place in large normal dispersion regime. We experimentally determinate the quantity of energy needed at each pump wavelength to obtain total suppression of the SRS and we evaluate the sensitivity of this effect with respect to the ZDW position.

Second harmonic generation in an air-silica microstructured optical fiber pumped by subnanosecond pulses is used in order to initiate modulation instability processes in normal and anomalous dispersion regimes. This allows us to generate an ultra wide and flat supercontinuum (350-1750 nm), covering the entire transparency window of silica and exhibiting a singlemode transverse profile in visible range.

We report on the experimental demonstration of a white-light supercontinuum generation in normally dispersive singlemode air-silica microstructured fiber. We demonstrate that the simultaneous excitation of the microstuctured fiber in its normal and anomalous dispersion regimes using the fundamental and second harmonic signals of a passively Q-switched microchip laser leads to a homogeneous supercontinuum in the visible range. This pumping scheme allows the suppression of the cascaded Raman effect predominance in favor of an efficient spectrum broadening induced by parametric phenomena. A flat supercontinuum extended from 400 to 700 nm is achieved.