October 1, 2000 / Vol. 25, No.

19 / OPTICS LETTERS 1415

Supercontinuum generation in tapered fibers

T. A. Birks, W. J. Wadsworth, and P. St. J. Russell

Optoelectronics Group, Department of Physics, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK

Received May 31, 2000

Supercontinuum light with a spectrum more than two octaves broad (370 – 1545 nm at the 20-dB level) was
generated in a standard telecommunications fiber by femtosecond pulses from an unamplified Ti:sapphire
laser. The fiber had been tapered to a diameter of ⬃2 mm over a 90-mm length. The pulse energy was
3.9 nJ (average power, 300 mW). This source of high-intensity single-mode white light should find widespread
applications in frequency metrology and spectroscopy, especially since no unconventional fibers are needed.
© 2000 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 060.4370, 060.2340, 120.3940, 190.4370.

There was recently much excitement over the genera-
tion of ultrabroadband supercontinuum light1 in a mi-
crostructure photonic crystal fiber (PCF).2 This fiber
is an undoped silica– air structure in which a small
core (1 2 mm across) is surrounded by large air holes.
The spectra span more than an octave and retain the
longitudinal mode structure of the mode-locked laser
source, which recently led to spectacular advances in
optical frequency metrology.3 There are also many
applications of such supercontinuum generation in
pulse compression, spectroscopy, and dispersion mea-
surement. Unfortunately the need for a special fiber
means that the technique is not widely available.
We report the generation of similarly broad super-
continuum light in a conventional telecommunications
fiber that has been tapered. Femtosecond pulses
from an unamplif ied Ti:sapphire laser were spectrally
broadened into a supercontinuum that could span
more than two octaves from the ultraviolet to the
third telecommunications window (370– 1545 nm at
the 20-dB level). Guided by f iber in a single mode
with an average spectral density of 0.25 mW nm21 ,
this white light has the brightness of a laser with the
bandwidth of a light bulb.
The fiber (Corning SMF-28; cutoff wavelength,
1250 nm; N.A., 0.1) was tapered by means of heating
and stretching in a f lame. Figure 1 depicts the re-
sulting structure, with a narrow taper waist connected
to untapered f ibers by taper transitions. The residual
fiber core is so small that the waist is effectively a
simple thread of silica in air, guiding light at the outer
boundary. The PCF described above also resembles a
silica thread4 and so has similar nonlinear properties.
The large refractive-index step between silica and
air allows light to be funneled into a very small area
共⬃1 mm2 兲, increasing its intensity and promoting
nonlinear effects. For example, enhanced self-phase
modulation was observed in tapered fibers by Dumais
et al.5 Furthermore, the group-velocity dispersion
(GVD) of the guided mode can be reduced or even
made anomalous at visible and near-infrared wave-
lengths (Fig. 2). For a 1.8-mm-diameter waist the
calculated GVD and the nonlinear effective area (for
wavelength l 苷 850 nm) are 1122 ps nm21 km21 and
1.2 mm2 , giving nonlinear and dispersion lengths of
0.6 and 150 mm, respectively,6 with our laser pulses.
Signif icant nonlinear spectral broadening is therefore
expected despite the strong dispersion. Indeed, the
anomalous dispersion helps to counteract the normal
dispersion suffered by the pulses en route to the taper
waist.
Tapered f ibers with short 共⬃35-mm兲 transitions and
long (90-mm) waists of uniform diameter 共⬃2 mm兲 were
formed by use of a traveling f lame.7 The overall op-
tical insertion loss was typically ⬃0.2 dB. Each fiber
was promptly glued at both ends in an enclosed hous-
ing after being made, but the waist and transitions re-
mained surrounded by air.
The unamplified Ti:sapphire laser (Coherent Mira
900) emitted 70– 100-fs pulses with a repetition rate
of 76 MHz 共l 苷 850 nm兲. However, after passing
through an isolator and launch optics, the pulses
spread to 200– 500 fs. The light was coupled into
each taper’s input fiber, which we kept short to mini-
mize further normal dispersion of the pulses. The
output f iber was ⬃1 m long.
The output light was visible as a very intense
far-f ield spot, as shown in Fig. 3. Both the untapered
fiber and the taper waist were multimode wave-
guides for visible and Ti:sapphire laser light, yet the
supercontinuum light was always generated in the
fundamental mode.
The output spectra from two f ibers that were
identically tapered to 1.8-mm diameter are plotted
in Fig. 4 for a time-averaged laser power of 300 mW
(pulse energy, 3.9 nJ). The spectra cover more
than two octaves in frequency: 370 –1545 nm at the
20-dB level in Fig. 4(b). Unlike all the other spectra
reported here, the fiber tapered to give the results
shown in Fig. 4(b) had a cutoff wavelength of 735 nm
instead of 1250 nm and so was single mode at the
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a tapered fiber. Light in
the core expands to fill the whole fiber in the taper waist.

0146-9592/00/191415-03$15.00/0 © 2000 Optical Society of America

1416 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 25, No. 19 / October 1, 2000

[Recall that waist diameter determines GVD (see

Fig. 2) as well as effective area.] The meaning of this
comparison for different powers is limited, but, as well
as requiring less power, smaller diameters produce
spectra that are less f lat: a “bite” is progressively
taken from visible wavelengths. The mean photon
energy appears to decrease, suggesting a greater
contribution to spectral broadening from Raman
scattering.
As expected, no spectral broadening was observed in
untapered f iber.
These results show that tapered f ibers, like PCF’s,
are effective media for the nonlinear generation of ul-
trabroadband high-intensity single-mode light. Fur-
thermore, despite the limited interaction length and
Fig. 2. Calculated GVD of a taper waist in air versus
(a) diameter for l 苷 850 nm (the asymptote is the GVD
of silica) and (b) l for (left to right) diameters of 1.0, 1.5,
and 2.5 mm, and for bulk silica. Positive values represent
anomalous dispersion.

Fig. 5. Output spectra from a tapered fiber with a 2-mm

waist, for (top to bottom) average powers of 380, 210, and
60 mW, with the input spectrum. The curves are scaled
vertically for comparison; the output spectra all had ap-
proximately the same peak value.

Fig. 3. Visible output far-f ield pattern from one of the ta-
pered fibers.

Fig. 4. Output spectra from tapered f ibers with waists

of 1.8-mm diameter for an average laser power of
300 mW. The cutoff wavelengths of the untapered fibers
were (a) 1250 nm (Corning SMF-28) and (b) 735 nm (New-
port F-SF). The dashed curves are the input spectra,
scaled vertically for comparison.

laser wavelength. However, Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) are

similar because the only difference between the two
taper waists is their insignif icant residual cores.
Figure 5 shows the effect of laser power (or pulse en-
ergy) on the output spectrum. Increasing the power Fig. 6. Output spectra for waist diameters and average
broadens the spectrum without increasing its peak. powers of (a) 2.5 mm and 430 mW, (b) 2.0 mm and 380 mW,
Spectra for four different waist diameters, two of which (c) 1.8 mm and 300 mW, (d) 1.5 mm and 70 mW. The
appeared in Figs. 4 and 5, are compared in Fig. 6. dashed curves are the (vertically scaled) input spectra.
 October 1, 2000 / Vol. 25, No. 19 / OPTICS LETTERS
the need for protection from dust and damage, distinct
advantages can be identif ied. No special fiber is re-
quired, only standard widely available telecommunica-
tions f iber. Even though the f iber is multimode, the
supercontinuum is generated in the fundamental mode.
The output is immediately compatible with the famil-
iar techniques and devices (e.g., fusion splices, connec-
tors, directional couplers) of conventional f iber optics.
Although the nonlinear interaction occurs in a nar-
row waist, the laser pulses are coupled into untapered
fiber with a much larger core than a PCF, ⬃9 mm in
diameter. Hence the input light need not be tightly
focused, simplifying alignment and making the fiber
end face less prone to optical damage than that of a
PCF. The tapered fiber itself is surprisingly robust.
None of our samples deteriorated over the several days
available. Indeed, one tapered f iber in its housing ac-
cidentally fell 1 m onto a hard f loor without being de-
stroyed. (This experiment was successfully repeated.)
Tapering is a well-known technique, widely used
commercially to make fiber beam splitters. It takes
only minutes to taper a fiber, so we could produce a va-
riety of samples quickly and easily. It is also straight-
forward to form nonuniform taper waists with a given
diameter prof ile. From Fig. 2, such a controlled
diameter variation causes a controlled dispersion vari-
ation, a degree of freedom that is hard to implement
in PCF but that should give greater control over the
supercontinuum spectrum.
In conclusion, we have demonstrated how an ultra-
broad supercontinuum can be generated in standard
telecommunications f iber that has been tapered to a
1417
diameter of ⬃2 mm. Femtosecond pulses from an
unamplified Ti:sapphire laser are sufficient to produce
a spectrum more than two octaves broad at the 20-dB
level. More generally, our results show that long
lengths, high powers, or complex structures are not
necessary for demonstration of exciting optical non-
linearities in fused silica. Tapered fibers should be
effective hosts for a wealth of other nonlinear effects
besides supercontinuum generation.
This work was partially supported by the Engineer-
ing and Physical Sciences Research Council. T. A.
Birks is a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
T. A. Birks’s e-mail address is pystab@bath.ac.uk.
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