Aspects of the present disclosure describe improved supercontinuum generation based upon alternating optical dispersion along a waveguide length that advantageously generates much more spectral bandwidth than possible with conventional, prior art techniques without losing coherence as well as supporting a larger range of pulse energies (i.e., for lower than conventionally allowed pulse energies or high pulse energies).

A supercontinuum light source can include a seed laser arranged to provide seed pulses with a pulse frequency F.sub.seed; a pulse frequency multiplier (PFM) arranged to multiply the seed pulses by converting pulses having the pulse frequency F.sub.seed to pump pulses with a pulse frequency F.sub.pump, where F.sub.pump is larger than F.sub.seed; and a non-linear element arranged to receive said pump pulses and convert said pump pulses to pulses of supercontinuum light. The PFM can further include a splitter for splitting pulses into first and second sub beams each having the same pulse frequency, where the PFM is configured such that the sub beams experience different delays; and a combiner for combining said first and second sub beams into a beam having the pulse frequency that is greater than said same pulse frequency. The splitter can have an uneven splitter ratio.

A supercontinuum source, comprises a pump source and a supercontinuum generator configured for receiving electromagnetic radiation derived from the pump source and for generating supercontinuum radiation, the supercontinuum generator comprising a nonlinear microstructured optical fibre having a core region comprising silica. The core region includes a dopant selected to reduce light-induced non-bridging oxygen hole centre loss in the nonlinear microstructured optical fibre.

A system and process scans a target area at a distance of 3-30 m for one or more materials. Scanning is performed by a coherent transmit beam aimed with the help of a thermal camera. The active source of the beam is a supercontinuum (SC) laser. The transmitted source beam is modulated by a high-speed Fourier-transform spectrometer prior to interaction with the target. Target reflected source beam is detected by an infrared detector, along with a reference portion of the transmitted source beam, as a series of interferograms; passed through a digitizer for digitizing the interferograms; and processed to producing spectrograms, wherein the spectrograms are indicative of one or more materials on the target.

A method of making a microstructured optical fiber including loading the core and cladding materials of the fiber with hydrogen and deuterium at a loading temperature; annealing the fiber at a selected temperature T.sub.anneal; pumping the fiber with radiation; and reducing the temperature of the fiber and storing the fiber at the reduced temperature before the step of pumping the fiber; and wherein the method allows the hydrogen and the deuterium to become bound to the core material and the cladding material.

A generating device includes at least one pulsed laser source that delivers primary photons having at least one wavelength in a single spatial mode and in pulses having a high pump energy, forming means that act on the primary photons to deliver an input beam, and at least one optical fiber having at least ten modes between which the pump energy is initially distributed, and able to relocate the latter via a non-linear effect into a fundamental mode, before generating secondary photons of various wavelengths by wavelength conversions from the wavelength of the primary photons in the fundamental spatial mode.

The invention relates to a device comprising: a laser source emitting a first beam with a central wavelength .sub.1 lying between 1010 nm and 1050 nm, a spectral supercontinuum generator downstream of the laser source, generating a second beam with a central wavelength .sub.2 lying between 1670 nm and 1730 nm from a part of the first beam, an optical parametric amplification system downstream of the spectral supercontinuum generator, generating a third beam with a central wavelength .sub.3 lying between 2540 nm and 2690 nm from at least a part of the second beam and a part of the first beam, and a second harmonic generator downstream of the optical parametric amplification system, the second harmonic generator generating a fourth beam with a central wavelength .sub.4 lying between 1270 nm and 1345 nm from at least a part of the third beam.

A system for generating light, comprises a spectral light source, characterized by a spectral line shape described by a visibility function; and a multimode waveguide, characterized by an optical path difference distribution described by a standard deviation. The standard deviation typically matches, within a predetermined tolerance, a location of a zero point of the visibility function at which a contrast of the visibility function is less than 0.1.

The invention relates to a supercontinuum light source comprising a microstructured optical fiber and a pump light source. The microstructured optical fiber comprises a core and a cladding region surrounding the core, as well as a first fiber length section, a second fiber length section and an intermediate fiber length section between said first and second fiber length sections. The first fiber length section comprises a core with a first characteristic core diameter. The second fiber length section comprises a core with a second characteristic core diameter, smaller than said first characteristic core diameter, where said second characteristic core diameter is substantially constant along said second fiber length section. The intermediate length section of the optical fiber comprises a core which is tapered from said first characteristic core diameter to said second characteristic core diameter over a tapered length.

Embodiments relate to a high power supercontinuum (SC) fiber optical source. The SC fiber optical source includes a prebroadening optical fiber that broadens the spectrum of a lower power intermediate optical signal before final amplification. The spectrum broadening creates spectral components which facilitate further spectrum broadening of amplified signal in final nonlinear stage, allowing to achive flatter and wider spectrum, and reduces nonlinear Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) that could damage SC fiber optical source components or limit the output power of the SC fiber optical source signal, thus enabling higher output power. After amplification in booster, passing at least part of broadened spectrum, the optical signal spectrum is further broadened by injecting the optical signal into a nonlinear stage to create a SC optical signal.