Compact, Long-Term Stable 3–10 μM MID-IR Supercontinuum Generation from 150-PS Thulium Ultrafast Laser Source

Over the last decade, supercontinuum fiber laser sources covering the spectral region of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$2-4\mu \mathrm{m}$</tex> have been widely studied and have become regular tools in many fields of science, notably micro-/spectroscopy, gas monitoring and hyperspectral imaging [1]–[2]. Motivated by the growing demand for applications requiring an extended mid-infrared (MIR) spectral range, considerable progress has been made to extend the emitted wavelength already up to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$18 \mu \mathrm{m}$</tex>, reaching the molecular fingerprint region, using fibers made from various soft glass compositions [3]. However, the limited accessibility of such fibers to laboratory settings complicates the widespread adoption of these sources. As a result, compact and reliable fiber laser sources covering spectral ranges up to near 10 μm continue to attract considerable attention within the scientific community. Currently, only a few industrial implementations of such broadband sources are available (see etc, [4]).