Optimization of optical properties of photonic crystal fibers infiltrated with chloroform for supercontinuum generation

A photonic crystal fiber made of fused silica glass, infiltrated with chloroform (CHCl3), is proposed as a new source of supercontinuum (SC) light. Guiding properties in terms of effective refractive index, attenuation, and dispersion of the fundamental mode are studied numerically. As a result, two optimized structures are selected for and verified against SC generation in detail. The dispersion characteristic of the first structure is all-normal and equals −7 ps · nm−1 · km−1 at 0.92 μm, while the dispersion characteristic of the second structure has the zero-dispersion wavelength at 1 μm, and SC generation was demonstrated for the wavelength 1.03 μm. We prove the possibility of coherent octave-wide SC generation in the wavelength range of 600-1260 nm and soliton fission based low-coherence flat SC in the wavelength range of 600-1400 nm, with 400 fs pulses and 0.8 nJ of energy in-coupled into the core of the studied structures. Proposed fibers are good candidates for all-fiber SC sources as an alternative to glass core fibers, since nonlinearity of CHCl3 is higher than silica and its toxicity is negligible. The proposed solution may lead to new low-cost all-fiber optical systems.