Abstract

Real time measurements of fluctuations during nonlinear pulse propagation in optical fibers present significant challenges, yet there is clearly much insight to be obtained in explicitly measuring shot-to-shot variation in pulse characteristics. This is especially the case in optical supercontinuum (SC) generation, where many different processes contribute to the spectral broadening, and isolating particular physical effects can be difficult or impossible using time-averaged measurements [1]. In this context, however, the recent development of dispersive-time stretching for real time spectral measurements represents a major development, providing new insights into effects of modulation instability (MI) and rogue wave generation [2], and the statistical analysis of low power SC generation around 1.5 μm [3]. However, results to date have been limited to low SC bandwidths of only around 200 nm, and the statistical data extracted from experiments has been only partially analyzed.

© 2013 IEEE