Photonic Crystals for Supercontinuum Generation- A White Light Source

Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF) form a new class of Optical fibers, which has attracted tremendous interest in the last few years. PCF's are typically silica fibers having a large number of air holes located in the cladding region. The strong wavelength dependency of the effective refractive index and the inherently large design flexibility of the PCF's allow for a whole new range of novel properties. Such properties include endlessly single-moded fibers, extremely nonlinear fibers and fibers with anomalous dispersion in the visible wavelength region. Supercontinuum generation is a process where laser light is converted to light with a very broad spectral bandwidth (i.e., low temporal coherence),whereas the spatial coherence usually remains high. The spectral broadening is usually accomplished by propagating optical pulses through a strongly nonlinear Photonic Crystal Fiber.