When picosecond or femtosecond pulses travel through a highly nonlinear medium, usually photonic crystal fiber, self-phase modulation, soliton dynamics, four-wave mixing and Raman scattering combine to spread the spectrum over hundreds or thousands of nanometers, for example 400 to 2400 nm. The output is as bright and directional as a laser but as broad as a lamp, used for microscopy, OCT and spectroscopy.
Supercontinuum source gives us everything from 450 to 2000 nm, just pick the band with the AOTF and send it to the microscope.
Also heard as
- SC
- white-light laser
- white-light continuum
Related terms
Self-phase modulation
Spectral broadening of an intense pulse caused by its own intensity changing the refractive index it travels through.
GVD
Group Velocity Dispersion: how strongly a material's group velocity changes with wavelength, which stretches short pulses.
Fiber laser
A laser whose gain medium is an optical fiber with a rare-earth-doped core, pumped by diodes.
Coherence length
The path difference over which a light source keeps a fixed phase relationship and can still form interference fringes.