All-fiber femtosecond Cherenkov laser at visible wavelengths

Fiber-optic Cherenkov radiation (CR), also known as dispersive wave generation or non-solitonic radiation, is produced in small-core photonic crystal fibers (PCF) when a soliton perturbed by fiber higher-order dispersion co-propagates with a dispersive wave fulfilling a certain phase-matching condition [1]. The resonant ultrafast wave conversion via the fiber-optic CR mechanism is instrumental for applications in biophotonics such as bio-imaging and microscopy [2]. In this work, we demonstrate a highly-stable all-fiber, fully monolithic CR system based on an Yb-fiber femtosecond laser, producing electrically tunable femtosecond CR output in the visible (VIS) spectral range of 580-630 nm, with the 3 dB spectral bandwidth not exceeding 36 nm, with average power in the milliwatt range. Relative intensity noise (RIN) of this laser, affecting the sensitivity of bio-imaging and microscopy systems, is found to be as low as -103 dBc/Hz. This is 2 orders of magnitudes lower noise as compared to spectrally-sliced supercontinuum, which is the current standard of ultrafast fiber-optic generation at visible wavelength.