Visible-spanning flat supercontinuum for astronomical applications

Abstract

We demonstrate a broad, flat, visible supercontinuum spectrum that is generated by a dispersion-engineered tapered photonic crystal fiber pumped by a 1 GHz repetition rate turn-key Ti:sapphire laser outputting $\sim$ 30 fs pulses at 800 nm. At a pulse energy of 100 pJ, we obtain an output spectrum that is flat to within 3 dB over the range 490-690 nm with a blue tail extending below 450 nm. The mode-locked laser combined with the photonic crystal fiber forms a simple visible frequency comb system that is extremely well-suited to the precise calibration of astrophysical spectrographs, among other applications.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication by Journal of Lightwave Technology. Code and data available online at http://walsworth.physics.harvard.edu/code/scgen-taper.zip

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Continuous Ultraviolet to Blue-Green Astrocomb
• Deep-UV-enhanced supercontinuum generated in tapered gas-filled photonic crystal fiber
• Enabling Discoveries: Thirty Years of Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation at the National Science Foundation