Supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber pumped by a self-pulsing-enhanced fiber oscillator

Abstract This work proposes and experimentally demonstrates a compact supercontinuum generation scheme that directly pumps a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) using a self-pulsing-enhanced fiber oscillator. By tailoring the bandwidth of the output coupler fiber Bragg grating (FBG) to between 0.04 nm and 0.10 nm, we intentionally enhance the oscillator’s self-pulsing dynamics. This yields a noise-like output with a maximum average power of approximately 248 W and a normalized standard deviation of 0.29 as well as a peak-to-average power ratio of 3.34, where the strong intensity fluctuations efficiently promote nonlinear spectral broadening. By directly coupling this oscillator (at a 0.04 nm FBG bandwidth) into a 16 m-long PCF, a broadband supercontinuum spanning 800–1700 nm with an average output power of ~140 W is successfully generated. Compared to conventional continuous-wave-pumped systems, the proposed approach requires a significantly shorter PCF length. Moreover, unlike pulsed-laser-pumped schemes that rely on complex multi-stage amplification, this single-stage architecture offers a more compact, cost-effective, and robust solution, holding strong promise for practical applications.