Supercontinuum Produced by Ultrashort Pulses from Ti:sapphire Laser and Nonlinear Photonic Crystal Fiber

Producing a supercontinuum broadens the spectrum of the laser beam to potentially include the complete visible spectrum as well as some infrared and ultraviolet, providing a more complete spectrum of selectable wavelengths. The supercontinuum is produced by nonlinear optical processes that occur when high intensity, ultrashort laser pulses are passed through a photonic crystal fiber. In this project, a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser was manually constructed to observe the supercontinuum effect