Comparison of supercontinuum generation based on high-energy nanosecond pulses via single-mode and photonic-crystal fibers

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We have experimentally investigated the supercontinuum (SC) generation based on high-energy Gaussian-spectrum pulses emitted from an erbium-doped fiber laser with large-anomalous dispersion. The pulses exhibit rectangular shape in temporal domain with the pulse duration of about 16 ns. When the amplified pulses propagate through 10-km single-mode fiber, the SC ranged from 1530 to 1750 nm arises from the stimulated-Raman-scattering effect and the pulses break up due to the modulation instability. Comparatively, when the amplified pulses propagate through a segment of highly-nonlinear zero-dispersion-flattened photonic crystal fiber, super-broad SC beyond the range of 1300–1750 nm is generated due to strong four-wave mixing effect, whereas the pulses almost maintain their shapes.