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We demonstrate a mid-IR frequency comb centered at 3120 nm with 650-nm (20-THz) bandwidth at a comb-teeth spacing of 500 MHz. The generated comb is based on a compact ring-type synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (SPOPO) operating at degeneracy and pumped by a mode-locked Er-doped 1560 nm fiber laser at a repetition rate of 100 MHz. We achieve high-repetition rate by using a fractional-length cavity with a roundtrip length of 60 cm, which is one-fifth of the length dictated by conventional synchronous pumping.

We theoretically study and experimentally demonstrate a pseudomorphic Ge/Ge0.92Sn0.08/Ge quantum-well microdisk resonator on Ge/Si (001) as a route toward a compact GeSn-based laser on silicon. The structure theoretically exhibits many electronic and optical advantages in laser design, and microdisk resonators using these structures can be precisely fabricated away from highly defective regions in the Ge buffer using a novel etch-stop process. Photoluminescence measurements on 2.7 μm diameter microdisks reveal sharp whispering-gallery-mode resonances (Q > 340) with strong luminescence.

We report a supercontinuum spanning well over an octave of measurable bandwidth from about 1 to 3.7 μm in a 2.1 mm long As₂S₃ fiber taper using the in situ tapering method. A sub-100-fs mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser system with ~300 pJ of pulse energy was used as the pump source. Third-harmonic generation was observed and currently limits the pump pulse energy and achievable spectral bandwidth.

Supercontinuum generation (SCG) in a tapered chalcogenide fiber is desirable for broadening mid-infrared (or mid-IR, roughly the 2-20 μm wavelength range) frequency combs(1, 2) for applications such as molecular fingerprinting, (3) trace gas detection, (4) laser-driven particle acceleration, (5) and x-ray production via high harmonic generation. (6) Achieving efficient SCG in a tapered optical fiber requires precise control of the group velocity dispersion (GVD) and the temporal properties of the optical pulses at the beginning of the fiber, (7) which depend strongly on the geometry of the taper. (8) Due to variations in the tapering setup and procedure for successive SCG experiments-such as fiber length, tapering environment temperature, or power coupled into the fiber, in-situ spectral monitoring of the SCG is necessary to optimize the output spectrum for a single experiment. In-situ fiber tapering for SCG consists of coupling the pump source through the fiber to be tapered to a spectral measurement device. The fiber is then tapered while the spectral measurement signal is observed in real-time. When the signal reaches its peak, the tapering is stopped. The in-situ tapering procedure allows for generation of a stable, octave-spanning, mid-IR frequency comb from the sub harmonic of a commercially available near-IR frequency comb. (9) This method lowers cost due to the reduction in time and materials required to fabricate an optimal taper with a waist length of only 2 mm. The in-situ tapering technique can be extended to optimizing microstructured optical fiber (MOF) for SCG(10) or tuning of the passband of MOFs, (11) optimizing tapered fiber pairs for fused fiber couplers(12) and wavelength division multiplexers (WDMs), (13) or modifying dispersion compensation for compression or stretching of optical pulses.(14-16.)

We report generation of 48 fs pulses at a center wavelength of 2070 nm using a degenerate optical parametric oscillator (OPO) synchronously-pumped with a commercially available 36-MHz, femtosecond, mode-locked, Yb-doped fiber laser. The spectral bandwidth of the output is ~137 nm, corresponding to a theoretical, transform-limited pulse width of 33 fs. The threshold of the OPO is less than 10 mW of average pump power. By tuning the cavity length, the output spectrum covers a spectral width of more than 400 nm, limited only by the bandwidth of the cavity mirrors.

We demonstrate mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum generation (SCG) with instantaneous bandwidth from 2.2 to 5 μm at 40 dB below the peak, covering the wavelength range desirable for molecular spectroscopy and numerous other applications. The SCG occurs in a tapered As(2)S(3) fiber prepared by in-situ tapering and is pumped by femtosecond pulses from the subharmonic of a mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser. Interference with a narrow linewidth c.w. laser verifies that the coherence properties of the near-IR frequency comb have been preserved through these cascaded nonlinear processes. With this approach stable broad mid-IR frequency combs can be derived from commercially available near-IR frequency combs without an extra stabilization mechanism.