Dispersive wave blue-shift in supercontinuum generation

We numerically study dispersive wave emission during femtosecond-pumped supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibres. We show that dispersive waves are primarily generated over a short region of high temporal compression. Despite the apparent complexity of the pump pulse in this region, we show that the dynamics of dispersive wave generation are dominated by a single fundamental soliton. However, any straightforward application of the theory that is thought to describe the blue emission, considerably underestimates the frequency shift. We show that in fact the red-shift of the soliton, caused by spectral recoil from the growing dispersive wave, causes an additional blue-shift of the resonant frequency which is in good agreement with full simulations. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.