Higher-order mode temperature-tunable supercontinuum generation in liquid-core optical fibers

Various applications in biophotonics require widely wavelength-selectable laser sources in the infrared(IR) with high spectral density rather than broad bandwidth. This requirement is barely covered by the recent advances in supercontinuum generation in static optical glass fibers, in which the nonlinear effects can mainly be controlled by the injected power [1]. Supercontinua in gas-core fibers ranging from the UV to visible wavelengths are additionally adjustable by the gas pressure but require complex fiber structures [2]. Due to their strong thermooptical coefficient liquid-core step-index fibers that have a high nonlinearity and wide transmission windows can be used for temperature-based supercontinuum tuning in the mid-infrared [3].