Supercontinuum generation in single-crystal YAG fibers

Many optical metrology applications require light that is both coherent and broadband. Supercontinuum (SC) spanning several wavelength octaves is an obvious candidate for such applications. Optical fibers are a natural platform for SC generation due to the long interaction length of light within the fiber which allows for broad SC which can ultimately be used as a tunable narrowband source. For tunability in the mid-IR regime, YAG fibers are an excellent candidate due to their high transparency, Kerr nonlinearity, and damage threshold. In our work, we study SC in undoped crystalline YAG fibers produced via laser-heated pedestal growth. We use femtosecond pulses to generate SC in fiber, pumping at several wavelengths ranging out to the mid-IR. Studying the power-dependence of SC generation, we use SC width and shape as indicators of mechanisms that generate SC at each pump wavelength.