Theoretical and experimental study of supercontinuum generation in a water-core PCF

Photonic crystal fibers have been the subject of several studies for potential applications in areas such as telecommunications, sensing, metrology, biology, medicine and spectroscopy. These fibers have a number of unique features owing to their geometric structure, which consists of a matrix of regular holes that travels along its longitudinal axis. This design allows the selective insertion of materials such as gas and liquids, which interact efficiently with the guided modes. The insertion of materials can also be explored to introduce a new degree of freedom to control the properties of waveguide, by modifying modal features such as nonlinear coefficient and dispersion. Such control may, in some cases, contribute to increase the efficiency of nonlinear effects, enabling the creation of a supercontinumm spectrum. In this work we compare results obtained both experimentally and numerically of supercontinuum generation in a distilled water-core photonic crystal fiber. The results indicate the importance of setting the pump close to the zero dispersion region of the material so that a broad spectrum can be obtained. Improved agreement between experiments and simulations requires a better degree of experimental detail to be incorporated into the theoretical model, which will be the objective of future studies and work.