Abstract
In this work we report on a method to substantially improve the conversion of near-infrared pulsed light into visible or mid-infrared radiation exploiting degenerate Four-Wave Mixing (FWM) in an endlessly single-mode photonic crystal fiber (PCF). In our previous work [1] we showed that it is possible to exploit FWM to simultaneously obtain Mid-infrared (MIR) and Visible (Vis) radiation. However, the pulses coming out of the system are not clean, exhibiting multiple peaks due to successive energy back-transfer processes. This multi-peak nature of the output pulses reduces, on the one hand, their applicability and, additionally, the overall converted pulse energy. The multi-peak structure originates from the periodic changes in direction of the energy flow in the FWM process (first the energy flows from the pump towards the signal and idler waves until substantial pump depletion is reached, and then, from that moment on, the energy flows from the signal and idler in direction to the pump) [2]. These periodic changes of direction of the energy flow can be recognized as an oscillatory behavior of the energy conversion efficiency along the fiber. Crucially, these periodic changes also limit the output peak power of the converted pulses. Thus, for the idler wave (at 670nm for an LMA-10 endlessly singlemode fiber when pumped at 1064nm) the maximum peak power lies slightly below half of the pump peak power, which is a serious limitation of this technique.
© 2011 Optical Society of America
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