Design of normal dispersion high nonlinear silica fiber and generation of flat optical frequency comb

Abstract

<sec>The scheme of generating optical frequency comb mainly includes mode-locked laser, electro-optic modulation comb, nonlinear Kerr micro-resonator comb, and nonlinear supercontinuum comb. For the nonlinear supercontinuum comb scheme, the silica-based high nonlinear fiber with near-zero flattened normal dispersion is required. However the fiber dispersion varies along the fiber due to the fabrication inaccuracy. Furthermore, nonlinear supercontinuum comb generation based on the nonlinear fiber has not been systematically studied. In this paper, an optimal design of four-clad flat normal dispersion high nonlinear silica fiber with a triangular core refractive index distribution for the flat optical frequency comb generation is carried out. The effects of the fiber cladding width and refractive index on the fiber dispersion characteristics and cut-off wavelength are studied through using the finite element method mode solver. The optimally designed fiber can obtain relatively flat near-zero normal dispersion in a wavelength range of 1400–1700 nm, the dispersion range is –3–0 <inline-formula><tex-math id="M5">\begin{document}$ \rm{p}\rm{s}/(\rm{k}\rm{m}\cdot \rm{n}\rm{m}) $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M5.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M5.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, and the dispersion slope is close to 0 at nearly 1550 nm. The effective mode field area of the nonlinear silica fiber is about 11<inline-formula><tex-math id="M6">\begin{document}$ {\text{μm}}^{2} $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M6.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M6.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, and the nonlinear coefficient can reach 12.8<inline-formula><tex-math id="M7">\begin{document}$ {\rm{W}}^{-1}{\cdot \rm{k}\rm{m}}^{-1} $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M7.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="23-20221115_M7.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula>.</sec><sec>Based on the electro-optic modulation pulse pumping the flat normal dispersion high nonlinear silica fiber, the flat optical frequency comb generation is systematically simulated with the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The time-frequency evolutions of a hyperbolic secant pulse, a Gaussian pulse and a super Gaussian pulse are simulated by using the X-Frog technology. The time-frequency spectrograms connect the time domain and the frequency domain of the pulse, clearly showing the change of pulse chirp during the propagation. The effects of various parameters on the optical frequency comb are studied, such as the fiber length, second-order dispersion, third-order dispersion, pulse peak power, pulse half width, pulse initial chirp, and pulse shape. An optical frequency comb with 3-dB flatness and about 40-nm bandwidth can be achieved based on hyperbolic secant pulse or Gaussian pulse pumping. Compared with the hyperbolic secant pulse and Gaussian pulse, the super Gaussian pulse can produce a flatter optical frequency comb. An optical frequency comb with 2-dB flatness and about 92-nm bandwidth can be achieved based on the super Gaussian pulse pumping. Therefore, based on the proposed high nonlinear fiber with normal dispersion , it is possible to realize an optical frequency comb with a repetition rate above 10 GHz, power flatness within 3 dB, and spectral bandwidth of about 40–90 nm. The simulation results are beneficial to promoting the localization of normal dispersion high nonlinear silica fiber and its application in flat optical frequency comb.</sec>