Supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers with nanoporous core made of soft glass

In this paper we report on the fabrication of a photonic crystal fiber with nanoporous core made of in-house synthesized silicate glass. The fiber uses three rings of holes around a core with a diameter of 4.7 µm. It effectively guides two modes with broadband flat normal dispersion and zero dispersion wavelengths at 1.0 and 1.6 µm. We have demonstrated supercontinuum generation in the range 600-940 nm with a spectral flatness variation below 8 dB when a fiber sample 23 cm long is pumped with 60 fs pulses with a central wavelength of 806 nm and pulse energy of 2.4 nJ. © 2011 by Astro Ltd., Published exclusively by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.