Abstract
We demonstrate a system based on telecom components for the generation of a coherent octave-spanning supercontinuum from a continuous-wave laser. The system utilizes direct multiplication of a 10 GHz signal derived from a commercial synthesizer to carve pulses from the laser, which are then iteratively chirped and compressed in two stages. After reducing the repetition rate of the resulting pulse train to 2.5 GHz using selective transmission through an electro-optic gate, propagation through highly-nonlinear fiber generates an octave-spanning supercontinuum spectrum. We discuss the impact of the noise of the modulation frequency on the coherence of the supercontinuum and discuss its mitigation. Close agreement between experiment and theory is shown throughout, and we use our ability to precisely model the experiment to propose an extension of the system to 20 GHz repetition rate.
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