Fiber-based supercontinuum sources for lab-on-a-chip applications

Supercontinuum (SC) laser combines the broadband nature of a lamp with the high brightness of a laser, which is an exciting tool for lab-on-a-chip applications. But today’s commercial SC sources, which are based on a high peak power pump and photonic crystal fibers, are bulky and expensive.

We are currently working on developing a compact and low cost broadband source for lab-on-a-chip applications. We proposed a scheme which uses a low dispersion slope highly nonlinear fiber in a ring resonator so that optical feedback will enhance nonlinear effects, and also the spectral coherence can be controlled. This reduces pump power requirements and provides additional degrees of freedom for optimization.