Thulium pumped high power supercontinuum in loss-determined optimum lengths of tellurite photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate the formation of an ultrabroad supercontinuum (SC) generated in short lengths of highly nonlinear tellurite photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) specifically designed for high power picosecond pumping at the thulium wavelength 1930 nm. The fibers exhibit high losses caused by material absorption below similar to 500 nm and at long wavelengths >4000 nm by both material and confinement loss. The fibers are endlessly single-mode with a relative hole size of 0.4 and we tune the pitch (Lambda) from 3 to 7 mu m to achieve zero-dispersion wavelengths both below and above the pump. We show how the SC has a maximum width at an optimum fiber length after which the bandwidth and power decay due to losses. We thus obtain a maximum bandwidth of 4.6 mu m for the PCF with the smallest Lambda, i.e., 3 mu m at an optimum length of only similar to 2.8 cm. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3478835]