A supercontinuum is formed when following the incidence of a laser beam onto a bulk material or a fiber laser, a mix of nonlinear processes take place (especially self-phase modulation (SPM) and/or four-wave mixing (FWM)) that result on the wide spectral broadening of the incoming beam.
Since supercontinuum generation is based on nonlinear processes, the nonlinearity of the supercontinuum material and the maintained intensity of the pump beam are both critical. In recent years, fiber lasers pumping Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF), with extremely high nonlinearity and very low dispersion, have become the most usual optical structure to generate supercontinuum at wavelengths centered at around 1micron.
The generation of supercontinuum at longer wavelengths, requires laser sources at longer wavelengths and optical structures that are adequate for the generation of supercontinuum at these wavelengths.
| Tunable Wavelength Output Tunable wavelength output across 1000 – 4000 nm that can serve as the centered wavelength of the supercontinuum. | High Peak Power Pulse durations across 100 – 200 fs with average powers up to 1 Watt (at the peak of the spectral range) that deliver the high peak power required for the efficient activation of the nonlinear processes. |
| Stable Beam Position Reduced beam pointing with tuning to maintain the alignment when coupling onto a fiber. | Excellent Beam Quality Excellent beam quality (M2<1.2) for optimum beam focusing. |