All-fiber 177.6 W supercontinuum source

Abstract

Supercontinuum has wide and important applications in a range of fields, so it is one of the hot research spots in recent years. In this paper the mechanism and the latest achievements in high power supercontinuum generation under continuous wave laser pump and pulsed laser pump regimes during the past several years are reviewed. The challenges and the problems that need to overcome in scaling the average output power of supercontinuum generation are analyzed. An all-fiber supercontinuum source constructed at the national university of defense technology is demonstrated with 177.6 W average output power which overcomes the problems of low splicing loss, facet damage of the output fiber, the heat treatment and the effective control of the nonlinear effects through the optimization of the whole system. To the best of the author's knowledge, the 177.6 W average output power is the highest value in ever reported ones.