超连续谱光源在众多科学领域具有广泛而重要的应用,近年来一直是国际研究热点.回顾了利用连续光激光器和脉冲光激光器抽运光子晶体光纤产生超连续谱光源的形成机制以及近几年来两种机制下高功率超连续谱光源所取得的进展,分析了在提高超连续谱光源输出平均功率过程中需要克服的难题.报道了国防科学技术大学通过优化超连续谱光源的整体结构,攻克了低损耗熔接、光纤端面抗损伤、热处理以及非线性效应的有效控制等关键技术,成功研制出一种全光纤结构、输出平均功率为177.6 W的超连续谱光源,光谱范围覆盖1064-2000 nm,10 dB光谱带宽约740 nm,光-光转换效率高达56%,功率水平为国际领先.
Supercontinuum has wide and important applications in a range of fields, so it is one of the hot research spots in recent years. In this paper the mechanism and the latest achievements in high power supercontinuum generation under continuous wave laser pump and pulsed laser pump regimes during the past several years are reviewed. The challenges and the problems that need to overcome in scaling the average output power of supercontinuum generation are analyzed. An all-fiber supercontinuum source constructed at the national university of defense technology is demonstrated with 177.6 W average output power which overcomes the problems of low splicing loss, facet damage of the output fiber, the heat treatment and the effective control of the nonlinear effects through the optimization of the whole system. To the best of the author's knowledge, the 177.6 W average output power is the highest value in ever reported ones.