Hundred-watt-level supercontinuum generation from an erbium-ytterbium doped fiber amplifier based on the cross-phase modulation.

The pumping mechanism based on the cross-phase modulation (XPM) effect can achieve a flat broadband supercontinuum (SC) output. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel, to the best of our knowledge, scheme for SC generation from a large mode area (LMA) erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber (EYDF) amplifier based on this XPM effect by utilizing both the gain and dispersion characteristics of the EYDF, achieving a hundred-watt-level flat broadband SC output. The scheme consists of two pulsed lasers with a synchronized trigger signal and a LMA-EYDF amplifier. In order to enhance the XPM effect effectively, the central wavelengths of two pulsed lasers are selected as 1030 nm and 1535 nm according to the calculated group velocity curve of the passive fiber in the EYDF amplifier. The output powers of 1030 nm and 1535 nm pulses are scaled to 58 W and 131 W after the EYDF, where the dual-wavelength is first amplified and the output power is the highest level in the 1 µm/1.5 µm dual-wavelength lasers reported so far. After the dual-wavelength lasers undergo the nonlinear accumulation in the EYDF amplifier, the final SC with a spectrum spanning the 770 nm-2055 nm at -10 dB level excluding the residual pump peak is achieved and an output power of 104 W is obtained. This is the widest spectral bandwidth at -10 dB level and the highest output power in the reported SC generation from an EYDF amplifier. This work provides a common platform to generate a high-power flat broadband SC independent of fiber design, further promoting the development of LMA fiber-based SC sources.