Abstract

Supercontinuum (SC) generation in photonic crystal fiber (PCF) has been the subject of extensive research [1]. Particular interest has focused on understanding the SC noise properties, as the SC amplitude and phase stability are key factors in assessing potential applications. In this context, significant experiments have recently been reported by Solli et al. where a photonic time stretching detection technique was used to characterize the shot-to-shot statistics of a SC generated with picosecond pulses in the anomalous dispersion regime. These results were important as they revealed that the shot-to-shot statistics of the broadband SC spectra were associated with the excitation of a small number of statistically-rare “rogue” soliton events associated with an enhanced red-shift and temporal intensity [2].

© 2009 IEEE