Supercontinuum Generation by Nonlinear Optics - Optical Signal Processing by Silicon Photonics - page 67

Chapter 6
Supercontinuum Generation
by Nonlinear Optics

Abstract Supercontinuum (SC) sources are replacement of white light sources.
Supercontinuum generation in optical fiber, pumped by different sources, which
include pumping with femto second (fs), picoseconds (ps) pulse sources, and con-
tinuous sources are reviewed in this chapter. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation
is used to discuss the spectral broadening or SC generation. Recently, SC genera-
tion has been proved very effective and some of its applications are very promis-
ing for future ultra-high bandwidth networks.

Keywords Supercontinuum • Spectral broadening • Nonlinear Schrödinger
equation • White light • Pulse compression • Spectroscopy • Optical coherence
tomography

Abbreviations

fs Femto second

ps Picoseconds

SC Supercontinuum

FWM Four-wave mixing

SOI Silicon-on-insulator

XPM Cross-phase modulation

6.1 Introduction

Nonlinear optics has inherent feature of generation of new frequency components
and spectral broadening, the process is known as supercontinuum generation. This
phenomenon occurs when narrowband incident pulses from pump beam results in
spectral broadening due to nonlinear effects. This gives a broadband, very often