Toward visible cw-pumped supercontinua

We report a 1 mu m cw-pumped supercontinuum that extends short of the pump wavelength to 0.65 mu m. This is achieved by using a 50 W Yb fiber laser in combination with a photonic crystal fiber with a carefully engineered zero-dispersion wavelength. We show that the short-wavelength generation is due to a combination of four-wave mixing and dispersive wave trapping by solitons. The evolution and limiting factors of the continuum are discussed. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America