Supercontinuum generation and intermodal four-wave mixing in a step-index few-mode fibre
Résumé
We demonstrate broadband supercontinuum generation from 560 nm up to 2350 nm by coupling a Q-switched picosecond microchip laser at 1064 nm into a 15 μm-core step-index germanium-doped silica fiber, designed to support five spatial modes at 1064 nm. It is further shown that multiple cascaded intermodal four-wave mixing and Raman processes take place in the fiber with large frequency detuning up to 150 THz. The multimode properties of this fiber yield a number of intermodal nonlinear coupling terms and the parametric sideband wavelengths have been obtained from the phasematching condition for intermodal four-wave mixing.