Polarized supercontinuum in birefringent photonic crystal fibre pumped at 1064 nm and application to tuneable visible/UV generation

We generate a flat, polarized and single mode supercontinuum (SC) spanning 450-1750 nm in a highly birefringent photonic crystal fibre (PCF) pumped by a 1064 nm microchip laser. More than 99% of the total power is kept in a single linear polarization. The measured power coupling penalty due to the elliptical core is less than 6% (0.25 dB). As one of its applications, we demonstrate tuneable visible/UV generation in the nonlinear crystal BIBO pumped by this polarized SC source. A tuneable range of 400-525 nm is obtained by critical phase matching in BIBO. We also show the results of visible/UV generation in BIBO pumped by the signal wavelength of polarized four-wave mixing (FWM) in PCF.