Highly Nonlinear Photonic-Crystal Fibers for the Spectral Transformation of Cr : Forsterite Laser Pulses

We demonstrate novel photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) fabricated of a highly nonlinear glass. Dispersion profiles and nonlinearity of these fibers are tailored with an array of submicron holes in the fiber core. With the PCF structure designed to provide a nonlinearity on the order of 103W−1km−1 at the radiation wavelength of 1μm and a fundamental-mode dispersion profile with zero group-velocity dispersion around 1.19μm, unamplified femtosecond Cr: forsterite laser pulses are efficiently frequency-converted into the 540–1000-nm wavelength range through solitonic spectral-transformation mechanisms and four-wave mixing.