Nonlinear Effects in Photonic Materials - Abstract
Frosz, Michael H.
The invention of photonic crystal fibres a decade ago has led to dramatic advances in supercontinuum generation. Extremely broad spectra can be achieved, covering more than an octave. The main advantage of using photonic crystal fibres is not that the core can be made very small for achieving high nonlinearity, but that the dispersion profile of the fibre can be engineered to a large degree. This talk will discuss how the various nonlinear effects are influenced by the dispersion profile. Then numerical simulations are used to show how proper fibre design can be used to shape the resulting supercontinuum spectrum to some degree. This is shown for vastly different pumping regimes, going from femtosecond to quasi-CW pump pulses.