All-photonic-crystal-fiber coherent black-light source

Photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) are widely recognized as efficient sources of white-light supercontinuum. Here, we show that a combination of an ultrashort-pulse ytterbium PCF laser with a highly nonlinear PCF enables all-fiber generation of ultrashort pulses of coherent UV radiation in the black-light spectral region with all the key processes, such as lasing, amplification, and conversion of the amplified PCF-laser output to the UV range, taking place in specifically designed fiber components. © 2010 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 190.4370, 190.7110. White-light supercontinuum generation is a spectacular phenomenonandapowerful technology [1–3] that enables new approaches in optical metrology [4], time-resolved spectroscopy [3], ultrafast photonics [5], nonlinear-optical microscopy [6], andneuroimaging [7]. Spectral broadening of short-pulse optical fields into a white-light superconti-nuumbecomes possible as a result of an intricate interplay of nonlinear-optical effects [1–3], including self-phase modulation, four-wavemixing, soliton self-frequency shift