Coherent supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber with all-normal group velocity dispersion

We demonstrate supercontinuum generation in a photonic crystal fiber with all-normal group velocity dispersion. Pumping a short section of this fiber with compressed pulses from a compact amplified fiber laser generates a 200 nm bandwidth continuum with typical self-phase-modulation characteristics. We demonstrate that the supercontinuum is compressible to a duration of 26 fs. It therefore has a high degree of coherence between all the frequency components, and is a single pulse in the time domain. A smooth, flat spectrum spanning 800 nm is achieved using a longer piece of fiber. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America