Interplay of Kerr and Raman beam cleaning with a multimode microstructure fiber

Opt Lett. 2018 Feb 1;43(3):587-590. doi: 10.1364/OL.43.000587.

Abstract

We experimentally study the competition between Kerr beam self-cleaning and Raman beam cleanup in a multimode air-silica microstructure optical fiber. Kerr beam self-cleaning of the pump is observed for a certain range of input powers only. Stokes Raman beam generation and cleanup lead to both depletion and degradation of beam quality for the pump. The interplay of modal four-wave mixing and Raman scattering in the infrared domain leads to the generation of a multimode supercontinuum ranging from 500 nm up to 1800 nm.