Broad and flat supercontinuum source (ranging from wavelengths 2.5μm to 8μm) using honeycomb microstructured fiber

Supercontinuum of electromagnetic waves plays a great role in various applications such as attaining of broadband source, frequency comb, ultrafast amplification, etc. In this paper, we designed chalcogenide Ge11.5As24Se64.5 honeycomb basis based photonic crystal fiber to produce mid-IR supercontinuum by passing 30 fs laser through it. We have optimized the geometrical and pump pulse parameters such that the broad and efficient supercontinuum can be achieved. The obtained spectrum is very broad (from 2 micron to 8 micron). Beyond 5 micron, it becomes difficult to attain broadening and flatness in previously reported results. But our designed structure with proper material selection and optimized parameters lead to flatness and broadening beyond 5 micron (upto 8 micron). Also, the required PCF length was half of the previously reported PCF length. We here demonstrate the variation of supercontinuum with various pump and design parameters such as input pump peak power, its pulse width and modal effective area (nonlinear coefficient is dependent on modal effective area) etc.