Fresnel diffraction supercontinuum generation

White supercontinuum (SC) produced from Fresnel diffraction was demonstrated in BK7 glasses using femtosecond laser pulses. For input pulse energy below the threshold for the onset of self-focusing and SC generation, an aperture was placed into the beam before the BK7 glass to redistribute the intensity by diffraction along the propagation axis to produce a stable SC. The SC occurred at various distances from the aperture containing odd number of Fresnel zones, mainly the first. This result plays an important role in studying the properties of SC sources as well as the diffraction field distribution. A distinct and stable interference ring pattern inside the conical four-photon emission is observed and attributed to the spatial arrangement of small-scale filaments at different distances in the glass.