We describe the recent discovery of an ultrafast Raman scattering mechanism, soliton-self mode conversion (SSMC). It features power-scalable frequency conversion of ultrashort pulses with near-100% photon-conversion efficiency, and dominates over even concurrent conventional seeded processes in spite of being noise initiated. Realising spatially coherent, MW peak-power-level, transform-limited, sub-100-fs pulses at non-traditional wavelengths directly out of fibers facilitates applications that are currently accessible primarily by bulk optical parametric oscillators. In addition, this mechanism enables endoscopic or flexible delivery of ultrashort energetic pulses at user-defined colours. We show representative applications of SSMC in multiphoton microscopy at the biologically crucial 1300-nm spectral range.

Date Published: 13 March 2019
PDF
Proc. SPIE 10897, Fiber Lasers XVI: Technology and Systems, 108971T (13 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2513647

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10897:
Fiber Lasers XVI: Technology and Systems
Adrian L. Carter; Liang Dong, Editor(s)