Tunable supercontinuum spectrum based on liquid crystal filled photonic crystal fiber

Abstract Tunable supercontinuum generation (SCG) is reported and analyzed numerically using nematic liquid crystal infiltrated photonic crystal fiber (NLC-PCF). The optical properties of the supported modes including the nonlinearity and dispersion are controlled using an external applied voltage or temperature due to the NLC infiltration. The modal analysis of the suggested design is studied using full vectorial finite element method. The pulse propagation is then implemented using a modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The effects of the geometrical parameters, rotation angle and temperature on the performance of the supercontinuum generation (SCG) are investigated. The proposed NLC-PCF achieves a tunable bandwidth with broadband light spectrum. At ϕ = 90° and T = 25°C, the bandwidth of the SC spectrum is equal to 6681 nm at a length of 5 mm and λ = 1550 nm. Additionally, at ϕ = 0°, bandwidth of 11025 nm is achieved at the same device length. The reported SCG has advantages of large bandwidth and high tunability relative to those presented in the literature