Stable supercontinuum generation in short lengths of conventional dispersion-shifted fiber

By propagating 500-fs pulses through 2.5 m of standard fiber followed by 2 m of dispersion-shifted fiber, we generated >200 nm of spectral continuum between 1430 and 1630 nm, which is flat to less than +/-0.5 dB over more than 60 nm. Pulses obtained by filtering the continuum show no increase in timing jitter over the source laser ansi are pedestal free to >28 dB, indicating excellent stability and coherence. We show that the second- and third-order dispersions of the continuum fiber and self phase modulation are primarily responsible for the continuum generation and spectral shaping and found close agreement between simulations and experiments. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 060.2310, 060.0060, 060.2380, 190.4370.